“By Jove, Ned, you are a lucky dog!” said a brother officer.  “She’s the prettiest girl in the room!  Why don’t you fling your hat at her feet, as these ardent Californians do?”

[Illustration:  “Russell crossed the room and sat beside Benicia.”]

“My cap is in the next room, but I will go over and fling myself there instead.”

Russell crossed the room and sat down beside Benicia.

“I should like to hear you sing under those cypresses out on the ocean about six or eight miles from here,” he said to her.  “I rode down the coast yesterday.  Jove! what a coast it is!”

“We will have a merienda there on some evening,” said Dona Eustaquia, who sat beside her daughter.  “It is very beautiful on the big rocks to watch the ocean, under the moonlight.”

“A merienda?”

“A peek-neek.”

“Good!  You will not forget that?”

She smiled at his boyishness.  “It will be at the next moon.  I promise.”

Benicia sang another song, and a half-dozen caballeros stood about her, regarding her with glances languid, passionate, sentimental, reproachful, determined, hopeless.  Russell, leaning back in his chair, listened to the innocent thrilling voice of the girl, and watched her adorers, amused and stimulated.  The Californian beauty was like no other woman he had known, and the victory would be as signal as the capture of Monterey.  “More blood, perhaps,” he thought, “but a victory is a poor affair unless painted in red.  It will do these seething caballeros good to learn that American blood is quite as swift as Californian.”

As the song finished, the musicians began a waltz; Russell took the guitar from Benicia’s hand and laid it on the floor.

“This waltz is mine, senorita,” he said.

“I no know—­”

“Senorita!” said Don Fernando Altimira, passionately, “the first waltz is always mine.  Thou wilt not give it to the American?”

“And the next is mine!”

“And the next contradanza!”

The girl’s faithful retinue protested for their rights.  Russell could not understand, but he translated their glances, and bent his lips to Benicia’s ear.  That ear was pink and her eyes were bright with roguish triumph.

“I want this dance, dear senorita.  I may go away any day.  Orders may come to-morrow which will send me where I never can see you again.  You can dance with these men every night of the year—­”

“I give to you,” said Benicia, rising hurriedly.  “We must be hospitable to the stranger who comes to-day and leaves to-morrow,” she said in Spanish to the other men.  “I have plenty more dances for you.”

After the dance, salads and cakes, claret and water, were brought to the women by Indian girls, who glided about the room with borrowed grace, their heads erect, the silver trays held well out.  They wore bright red skirts and white smocks of fine embroidered linen, open at the throat, the sleeves very short.  Their coarse hair hung in heavy braids; their bright little eyes twinkled in square faces scrubbed until they shone like copper.