“Ay, my poor Ysabel!  My heart breaks every night when I say a prayer for her.”  She tightened the clasp of her arms and pressed her face close to her mother’s.  “Mamacita, darling,” she said coaxingly, “I have a big favour to beg.  Ay, an enormous one!  How dare I ask it?”

“Aha!  What is it?  I should like to know.  I thought thy tenderness was a little anxious.”

“Ay, mamacita!  Do not refuse me or it will break my heart.  On Wednesday night Don Thomas Larkin gives a ball at his house to the officers of the American squadron.  Oh, mamacita! mamacita! darling! do, do let me go!”

“Benicia!  Thou wouldst meet those men?  Valgame Dios!  And thou art a child of mine!”

She flung the girl from her, and walked rapidly up and down the room, Benicia following with her little white hands outstretched.  “Dearest one, I know just how you feel about it!  But think a moment.  They have come to stay.  They will never go.  We shall meet them everywhere—­every night—­every day.  And my new gown, mamacita!  The beautiful silver spangles!  There is not such a gown in Monterey!  Ay, I must go.  And they say the Americans hop like puppies when they dance.  How I shall laugh at them!  And it is not once in the year that I have a chance to speak English, and none of the other girls can.  And all the girls, all the girls, all the girls, will go to this ball.  Oh, mamacita!”

Her mother was obliged to laugh.  “Well, well, I cannot refuse you anything; you know that!  Go to the ball!  Ay, yi, do not smother me!  As you have said—­that little head can think—­we must meet these insolent braggarts sooner or later.  So I would not—­” her cheeks blanched suddenly, she caught her daughter’s face between her hands, and bent her piercing eyes above the girl’s soft depths.  “Mother of God!  That could not be.  My child!  Thou couldst never love an American!  A Gringo!  A Protestant!  Holy Mary!”

Benicia threw back her head and gave a long laugh—­the light rippling laugh of a girl who has scarcely dreamed of lovers.  “I love an American?  Oh, my mother!  A great, big, yellow-haired bear!  When I want only to laugh at their dancing!  No, mamacita, when I love an American thou shalt have his ears for thy necklace.”

III

Thomas O. Larkin, United States Consul to California until the occupation left him without duties, had invited Monterey to meet the officers of the Savannah, Cyane, and Levant, and only Dona Modeste Castro had declined.  At ten o’clock the sala of his large house on the rise of the hill was thronged with robed girls in every shade and device of white, sitting demurely behind the wide shoulders of coffee-coloured dowagers, also in white, and blazing with jewels.  The young matrons were there, too, although they left the sala at intervals to visit the room set apart for the nurses and children; no Monterena ever left her little ones at home.  The old men and the caballeros wore the black coats and white trousers which Monterey fashion dictated for evening wear; the hair of the younger men was braided with gay ribbons, and diamonds flashed in the lace of their ruffles.