For answer she sprang to him again.

“What difference is it how you look?” she cried, still sobbing.  “Is it not you? Are not you in here just the same?  What matter?  What matter?  No matter what you looked through, you would be the same.  Listen,” she continued rapidly, after a moment.  “We are in a new country; there is hope for us.  If we can reach the Spanish towns of the South, we are safe.  I will ask Don Diego Estenega to help us, and he is not the man to refuse.  He stays with us to-night, and I will speak alone with him.  Meet me to-morrow night—­where?  At the grist-mill at midnight.  We had better not meet by day again.  Perhaps we can go then.  You will be there?”

“Will I be there?  God!  Of course I will be there.”

And, the brief details of their flight concluded, they forgot it and all else for the hour.

II

Natalie could not obtain speech alone with Estenega that evening; but the next morning the Princess Helene commanded her household and guest to accompany her up the hill to the orchard at the foot of the forest; and there, while the others wandered over the knolls of the shadowy enclosure, Natalie managed to tell her story.  Estenega offered his help spontaneously.

“At twelve to-night,” he said, “I will wait for you in the forest with horses, and will guide you myself to Monterey.  I have a house there, and you can leave on the first barque for Boston.”

As soon as the party returned to the Fort, Estenega excused himself and left for his home.  The day passed with maddening slowness to Natalie.  She spent the greater part of it walking up and down the immediate cliffs, idly watching the men capturing the seals and otters, the ship-builders across the gulch.  As she returned at sunset to the enclosure, she saw the miller’s son standing by the gates, gazing at her with hungry admiration.  He inspired her with sudden fury.

“Never presume to look at me again,” she said harshly.  “If you do, I shall report you to the Governor.”

And without waiting to note how he accepted the mandate, she swept by him and entered the Fort, the gates clashing behind her.

The inmates of Fort Ross were always in bed by eleven o’clock.  At that hour not a sound was to be heard but the roar of the ocean, the soft pacing of the sentry on the ramparts, the cry of the panther in the forest.  On the evening in question, after the others had retired, Natalie, trembling with excitement, made a hasty toilet, changing her evening gown for a gray travelling frock.  Her heavy hair came unbound, and her shaking hands refused to adjust the close coils.  As it fell over her gray mantle it looked so lovely, enveloping her with the silver sheen of mist, that she smiled in sad vanity, remembering happier days, and decided to let her lover see her so.  She could braid her hair at the mill.