"Certainly, Señora Valentino. If you thus request, my time is at your disposal." "Here is a bench near the gatekeeper's lodge. Will you sit here awhile, reverend father?" The padre seated himself by the woman's side. "Perhaps I should yet further introduce myself to you. My husband, the late Colonel Clodio Valentino, was cousin-german to your mother, daughter of Ambassador Altamira, of Castile." The friar looked keenly at his companion. "I have not seen my mother in ten years. She spoke often of Clodio Valentino, colonel of the Royal Hussars, and of his wife. It would seem as if the lady must be much older than you, señora." "I am the Colonel's second wife. We were married seven years ago." "I see." "Padre Osuna, you can be of wonderful service to the great kingdom of which you are a citizen. In so doing you fulfill a duty to your state and to this province of California." "Kindly explain, señora." "California is as a ripe apple ready to drop into a basket. It oscillates to and fro. Great Britain holds one basket; the United States of America, another. Russia, with a third basket, stands at a distance. Mexico is the tree which must lose the apple in any case. Reverend padre, you have the length and strength of arm so to shake the tree that the Great Britain basket catches the apple." "Why should I do so, if I could?" "The United States looks eagerly on this province. That colossal nation reaches now to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and it seeks to make the Pacific Ocean its boundary on the west. A continent-wide dominion is its aim." "Señora Valentino, I live secluded from the world, and do not wish to share in its politics." "But politics can affect the welfare of your spiritual children. Call to mind the secularization of your missions by the Mexican government. That was a political act, yet it cut the nerve of your Order's religious enterprise in this part of the world. Is it not so?" "I believe that it is. Yet our Order once built here a Christian community from wandering savages, and our heart has not lost zeal, nor our hand willingness." "I rejoice with you in all that, reverend father, but it was done when the flag of considerate Spain waved here, and the work of the church was deemed paramount. That flag has departed forever. Why not, then, seek another protector for Missions and for province which will make void the inconsiderate work of Mexico, and which will not be second to Spain, in good endeavor?" "Señora, when rumors of change float in the air I close the windows and doors of my soul to all, that I may give myself unstinted to the work among God's untutored children." "Why not safeguard the temporal and spiritual rights of your Indians? Ah! padre, think of India over which England is suzerain. There the amplest freedom is not only allowed but guaranteed to each native cult; neither does anyone hear of sequestration of church property."