The girls passed their twenty-four hours of repressed energy as patiently as necessity compelled.  Pilar, alone, lay impassive in her bed, rarely opening her eyes.  The others groaned and sighed and rolled and bounced about; but they dared not speak, for stern Sister Augusta was in close attendance.  When the last lagging minute had gone and they were bidden to rise, they sprang from the beds, flung on their clothes, and ran noisily down the long corridors to the refectory.  Dona Concepcion stood at the door and greeted them with a forgiving smile.  Pilar followed some moments later.  There was something more than coldness in her eyes as she bent her head to the Lady Superior, who drew a quick breath.

“She feels that she has been humiliated, and she will not forgive,” thought Dona Concepcion.  “Ay de mi!  And she may need my advice and protection.  I should have known better than to have treated her like the rest.”

After supper the girls went at once to the great sala of the convent, and sat in silence, with bent heads and folded hands and every appearance of prayerful revery.

It was Saturday evening, and the good priest of the Presidio church would come to confess them, that they might commune on the early morrow.  They heard the loud bell of the convent gate, then the opening and shutting of several doors; and many a glance flashed up to the ceiling as the brain behind scurried the sins of the week together.  It had been arranged that the six leading misdemeanants were to go first and receive much sound advice, before the old priest had begun to feel the fatigue of the confessional.  The door opened, and Dona Concepcion stood on the threshold.  Her face was whiter than usual, and her manner almost ruffled.

“It is Padre Dominguez,” she said.  “Padre Estudillo is ill.  If—–­if—­any of you are tired, or do not wish to confess to the strange priest, you may go to bed.”

Not a girl moved.  Padre Dominguez was twenty-five and as handsome as the marble head of the young Augustus which stood on a shelf in the Governor’s sala.  During the year of his work in Monterey more than one of the older girls had met and talked with him; for he went into society, as became a priest, and holidays were not unfrequent.  But, although he talked agreeably, it was a matter for comment that he loved books and illuminated manuscripts more than the world, and that he was as ambitious as his superior abilities justified.

“Very well,” said Dona Concepcion, impatiently.  “Eustaquia, go in.”

Eustaquia made short work of her confession.  She was followed by Elena, Lola, Mariana, and Amanda.  When the last appeared for a moment at the door, then courtesied a good night and vanished, Dona Concepcion did not call the expected name, and several of the girls glanced up in surprise.  Pilar raised her eyes at last and looked steadily at the Lady Superior.  The blood rose slowly up the nun’s white face, but she said carelessly:—­