At this announcement Faquita squared her elbows and looked at Mariquita with snapping eyes.

“Oho, senorita, I suppose thou wilt say next that thou knowest what means this flirtation!  Has La Tulita lost her heart, perhaps?  And Don Ramon—­dost thou know why he leaves Monterey one hour after he comes?” Her tone was sarcastic, but in it was a note of apprehension.

Mariquita tossed her head, and all pressed close about the rivals.

“What dost thou know, this time?” inquired the girl, provokingly.  “Hast thou any letter to read today?  Thou dost forget, old Faquita, that Ana is my friend—­”

“Throw the clothes in the tubs,” cried Faquita, furiously.  “Do we come here to idle and gossip?  Mariquita, thou hussy, go over to that tub by thyself and wash the impertinent American rags.  Quick.  No more talk.  The sun goes high.”

No one dared to disobey the queen of the tubs, and in a moment the women were kneeling in irregular rows, tumbling their linen into the water, the brown faces and bright attire making a picture in the colorous landscape which some native artist would have done well to preserve.  For a time no sound was heard but the distant roar of the surf, the sighing of the wind through the pines on the hill, the less romantic grunts of the women and the swish of the linen in the water.  Suddenly Mariquita, the proscribed, exclaimed from her segregated tub:—­

“Look!  Look!”

Heads flew up or twisted on their necks.  A party of young people, attended by a duena, was crossing the meadow to the road.  At the head of the procession were a girl and a man, to whom every gaze which should have been intent upon washing-tubs alone was directed.  The girl wore a pink gown and a reboso.  Her extraordinary grace made her look taller than she was; the slender figure swayed with every step.  Her pink lips were parted, her blue starlike eyes looked upward into the keen cold eyes of a young man wearing the uniform of a lieutenant of the United States army.

The dominant characteristics of the young man’s face, even then, were ambition and determination, and perhaps the remarkable future was foreshadowed in the restless scheming mind.  But to-day his deep-set eyes were glowing with a light more peculiar to youth, and whenever bulging stones afforded excuse he grasped the girl’s hand and held it as long as he dared.  The procession wound past the tubs and crossing the road climbed up the hill to the little wooded cemetery of the early fathers, the cemetery where so many of those bright heads were to lie forgotten beneath the wild oats and thistles.

“They go to the grave of Benicia Ortega and her little one,” said Francesca.  “Holy Mary!  La Tulita never look in a man’s eyes like that before.”

“But she have in his,” said Mariquita, wisely.

“No more talk!” cried Faquita, and once more silence came to her own.  But fate was stronger than Faquita.  An hour later a little girl came running down, calling to the old woman that her grandchild, the consolation of her age, had been taken ill.  After she had hurried away the women fairly leaped over one another in their efforts to reach Mariquita’s tub.