But Elena needed neither.  She forgot her desire for death, her misgivings of the future; she slipped out of bed, and would have taken a pair of silk stockings from the chest, but her mother stopped her with an imperious gesture, and handed her the coarse shoes and stockings the maid had brought.  Elena raised her eyes wonderingly, but drew them on her tender feet without complaint.  Then her mother gave her the shapeless undergarments, the gaudy calico frock, and she put them on.  When the maid returned with the chocolate and wine, she drank both.  They gave her colour and strength; and as she stood up and faced her mother, she had never looked more beautiful nor more stately in the silken gowns that were hers no longer.

[Illustration:  “HE BENT DOWN AND CAUGHT HER IN HIS ARMS.”]

“There are horses’ hoofs,” said Dona Jacoba.  “Leave thy father’s house and go to thy lover.”

Elena followed her from the room, walking steadily, although she was beginning to tremble a little.  As she passed the table in the library, she picked up an old silk handkerchief of her father’s and tied it about her head and face.  A smile was on her lips, but no joy could crowd the sadness from her eyes again.  Her spirit was shadowed; her nature had come to its own.

They walked through the silent house, and to Elena’s memory came the picture of that other bridal, when the very air shook with pleasure and the rooms were jewelled with beautiful faces; but she would not have exchanged her own nuptials for her sister’s calm acceptance.

When she reached the veranda she drew herself up and turned to her mother with all that strange old woman’s implacable bearing.

“I demand one wedding present,” she said.  “The greenhide reata.  I wish it as a memento of my mother.”

Dona Jacoba, without the quiver of a muscle, walked into her husband’s room and returned with the reata and handed it to her.  Then Elena turned her back upon her father’s house and walked down the road through the willows.  Dario did not notice the calico frock or the old handkerchief about her head.  He bent down and caught her in his arms and kissed her, then lifting her to his saddle, galloped down the road to San Luis Obispo.  Dona Jacoba turned her hard old face to the wall.

A RAMBLE WITH EULOGIA[1]

[Footnote 1:  Pronounced a-oo-lo-hia.]

I

Dona Pomposa crossed her hands on her stomach and twirled her thumbs.  A red spot was in each coffee-coloured cheek, and the mole in her scanty eyebrow jerked ominously.  Her lips were set in a taut line, and her angry little eyes were fixed upon a girl who sat by the window strumming a guitar, her chin raised with an air of placid impertinence.