A frown lowered on Masterton’s brow.  “You don’t understand me,” he said, bluntly.  “I did not know who was here.”

“Ah, Bueno!  Then it is Pepita Ramirez, you see,” she said, tapping her bodice with one little finger, “all the same; the niece from Manuel Garcia, who keeps the Mission garden and lif there.  And you?”

“My name is Masterton.”

“How mooch?”

“Masterton,” he repeated.

She tried to pronounce it once or twice desperately, and then shook her little head so violently that a yellow rose fastened over her ear fell to the ground.  But she did not heed it, nor the fact that Masterton had picked it up.

“Ah, I cannot!” she said, poutingly.  “It is as deefeecult to make go as my guitar with your serenade.”

“Can you not say ’Stephen Masterton’?” he asked, more gently, with a returning and forgiving sense of her childishness.

“Es-stefen?  Ah, Esteban!  Yes; Don Esteban!  Bueno!  Then, Don Esteban, what for you sink so melank-olly one night, and one night so fierce?  The melank-olly, he ees not so bad; but the fierce—­ah! he is weeked!  Ess it how the Americano make always his serenade?”

Masterton’s brow again darkened.  And his hymn of exultation had been mistaken by these people—­by this—­this wanton child!

“It was no serenade,” he replied, curtly; “it was in the praise of the Lord!”

“Of how mooch?”

“Of the Lord of Hosts—­of the Almighty in Heaven.”  He lifted his long arms reverently on high.

“Oh!” she said, with a frightened look, slightly edging away from the wall.  At a secure distance she stopped.  “Then you are a soldier, Don Esteban?”

“No!”

“Then what for you sink ‘I am a soldier of the Lord,’ and you will make die ‘in His army’?  Oh, yes; you have said.”  She gathered up her guitar tightly under her arm, shook her small finger at him gravely, and said, “You are a hoombog, Don Esteban; good a’ night,” and began to glide away.

“One moment, Miss—­Miss Ramirez,” called Masterton.  “I—­that is you—­you have—­forgotten your rose,” he added, feebly, holding up the flower.  She halted.

“Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours.  I have drop, you have pick me up, but I am not yours.  Good a’ night, COMANDANTE Don Esteban!”

With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little distance, suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest gaps in its ruined and helpless structure.  Stephen Masterton gazed after her stupidly, still holding the rose in his hand.  Then he threw it away and re-entered his home.

Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently—­so fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was wiped from his mind, and went to bed.  He slept well and dreamlessly.  The next morning, when his thoughts recurred to the previous night, this seemed to him a token that he had not deviated from his spiritual integrity; it did not occur to him that the thought itself was a tacit suspicion.