“Never!  I was sound asleep.”

“I know, I know.  Now trot away.  I hear my mother coming,” and Aunt Anastacia obediently left her niece to the more congenial company of the Senor Dumas.

III

The steep hills of San Luis Obispo shot upward like the sloping sides of a well, so round was the town.  Scarlet patches lay on the slopes—­the wide blossoms of the low cacti.  A gray-green peak and a mulberry peak towered, kithless and gaunt, in the circle of tan-coloured hills brushed with purple.  The garden of the mission was green with fruit trees and silver with olive groves.  On the white church and long wing lay the red tiles; beyond the wall the dull earth huts of the Indians.  Then the straggling town with its white adobe houses crouching on the grass.

Eulogia was sixteen.  A year had passed since Juan Tornel serenaded beneath her window, and, if the truth must be told, she had almost forgotten him.  Many a glance had she shot over her prayer-book in the mission church; many a pair of eyes, dreamy or fiery, had responded.  But she had spoken with no man.  After a tempestuous scene with her mother, during which Aunt Anastacia had wept profusely, a compromise had been made:  Eulogia had agreed to have no more flirtations until she was sixteen, but at that age she should go to balls and have as many lovers as she pleased.

She walked through the olive groves with Padre Moraga on the morning of her sixteenth birthday.  The new padre and she were the best of friends.

“Well,” said the good old man, pushing the long white hair from his dark face—­it fell forward whenever he stooped—­“well, my little one, thou goest to thy first ball to-night.  Art thou happy?”

Eulogia lifted her shoulder.  Her small nose also tilted.

“Happy?  There is no such thing as happiness, my father.  I shall dance, and flirt, and make all the young men fall in love with me.  I shall enjoy myself, that is enough.”

The padre smiled; he was used to her.

“Thou little wise one!” He collected himself suddenly.  “But thou art right to build thy hopes of happiness on the next world alone.”  Then he continued, as if he merely had broken the conversation to say the Angelus:  “And thou art sure that thou wilt be La Favorita?  Truly, thou hast confidence in thyself—­an inexperienced chit who has not half the beauty of many other girls.”

“Perhaps not; but the men shall love me better, all the same.  Beauty is not everything, my father.  I have a greater attraction than soft eyes and a pretty mouth.”

“Indeed!  Thou baby!  Why, thou art no bigger than a well-grown child, and thy mouth was made for a woman twice thy size.  Where dost thou keep that extraordinary charm?” Not but that he knew, for he liked her better than any girl in the town, but he felt it his duty to act the part of curb-bit now and again.