"We are well satisfied, señor, and we are gay when we wish. There are ten families in the town, and many rancheros within a hundred leagues. They think nothing of coming to our balls. And we have grand religious processions, and bull-fights, and races. We have beautiful cañons for meriendas; and I could dance every night if I wished. We are few, but we are quite as gay and quite as happy as you in your capital." The pride of the Iturbi y Moncadas and of the Barbariña flashed in her eyes, then made way for anger under the amused glance of Estenega. "Oh, of course," he said, teasingly. "You are to Monterey what Monterey is to the city of Mexico. But, pardon me, señorita; I would not anger you for all the gold which is said to lie like rocks under our Californias,--if it be true that certain padres hold that mighty secret. (God! how I should like to get one by the throat and throttle it out of him!) Pardon me again, señorita; I was going to say that you may be pleased to know that there is little magnificence where my ranchos are,--high on the coast, among the redwoods. I live in a house made of big ugly logs, unpainted. There are no cavalcades in the cold depths of those redwood forests, and the ocean beats against ragged cliffs. Only at Fort Ross, in her log palace, does the beautiful Russian, Princess Hélène Rotscheff, strive occasionally to make herself and others forget that the forest is not the Bois of her beloved Paris, that in it the grizzly and the panther hunger for her, and that an Indian Prince, mad with love for the only fair-haired woman he has ever seen, is determined to carry her off----" "Tell me! tell me!" cried Chonita, eagerly, forgetting her rôle and her enemy. "What is that? I do not know the princess, although she has sent me word many times to visit her--Did an Indian try to carry her off?"