* The Spanish “rubric” is the complicated flourish attached
     to a signature, and is as individual and characteristic as
     the handwriting.

With the embarrassment of an underbred man, Miguel tried to appear unconcerned, but failed dismally.  Indeed, I fear that the black eyes of Carmen had already done their perfect and accepted work, and had partly induced the application for Victor’s aid.  He, however, dissembled so far as to ask: 

“But will she not know?”

“She is a child.”

“But will she not talk?”

“Not if I say nay, and if thou—­eh, Miguel?”

This bit of flattery (which, by the way, was a lie, for Victor’s niece did not incline favorably to Miguel), had its effect.  They shook hands over the table.  “But,” said Miguel, “what is to be done must be done now.”  “At the moment,” said Victor, “and thou shalt see it done.  Eh?  Does it content thee? then come!”

Miguel nodded to Manuel.  “We will return in an hour; wait thou here.”

They filed out into the dark, irregular street.  Fate led them to pass the office of Dr. Guild at the moment that Concho mounted his horse.  The shadows concealed them from their rival, but they overheard the last injunctions of the President to the unlucky Concho.

“Thou hearest?” said Miguel, clutching his companion’s arm.

“Yes,” said Victor.  “But let him ride, my friend; in one hour we shall have that that shall arrive years before him,” and with a complacent chuckle they passed unseen and unheard until, abruptly turning a corner, they stopped before a low adobe house.

It had once been a somewhat pretentious dwelling, but had evidently followed the fortunes of its late owner, Don Juan Briones, who had offered it as a last sop to the three-headed Cerberus that guarded the El Refugio Plutonean treasures, and who had swallowed it in a single gulp.  It was in very bad case.  The furrows of its red-tiled roof looked as if they were the results of age and decrepitude.  Its best room had a musty smell; there was the dampness of deliquescence in its slow decay, but the Spanish Californians were sensible architects, and its massive walls and partitions defied the earthquake thrill, and all the year round kept an even temperature within.

Victor led Miguel through a low anteroom into a plainly-furnished chamber, where Carmen sat painting.

Now Mistress Carmen was a bit of a painter, in a pretty little way, with all the vague longings of an artist, but without, I fear, the artist’s steadfast soul.  She recognized beauty and form as a child might, without understanding their meaning, and somehow failed to make them even interpret her woman’s moods, which surely were nature’s too.  So she painted everything with this innocent lust of the eye,—­flowers, birds, insects, landscapes, and figures,—­with a joyous fidelity, but no particular poetry.  The bird never sang to