"May I ask how you know?"
"I never saw anything so serenely—arrogantly, perhaps would be a truer description—triumphant as your bearing when you walked down our humble sala to-night. You looked like Caesar returned from Gaul; but I suppose that all great conquests are merely the sum of many small ones."
"I do not regard the friendship of so shrewd a man as Father Abella a trifling conquest. And according to yourself, dear senorita, it is essential to the success of a mission upon which many lives and my own honor depend."
"Is it really so serious?" she asked with a faint sneer.
He drew himself up stiffly and his light eyes glowed with anger. "It is a subject I never should have thought of introducing at a festivity like this," he said suavely. "May I be permitted to compliment you, senorita, upon your marvellous grace in the contra-danza? It quite turned my head, and I am delighted to hear that you will dance alone after supper."
Her face had flushed hotly. She dropped her eyes and her voice trembled as she replied: "You humiliate me, senor, and I deserve it. I—my poor Rosa told me something of her great tragedy while dressing me, and for the moment other things seemed unimportant. What is hunger and court favor beside a broken heart and a desolate life? But that of course is the attitude of an ignorant girl." She raised her eyes. They were soft, and her voice was softer. "I beg that you will forgive me, senor. And be sure that I take an even deeper interest in your great mission than yesterday. I have thought much about it, and while I have told my mother nothing, I have expressed certain peevish hopes that a ship would not come all the way from Sitka without taking a hint more than one Boston skipper must have given, and brought us many things we need. She is quite excited over the prospect of a new shawl for herself, and of sending several as presents to the south; besides many other things: cotton, shoes, kitchen utensils. Have you any of these things, Excellency?"
Rezanov stared at her face, barely tinted with color, dully wondering why it should be so different from the one roguish, pathetically innocent, that had haunted him all day. He asked abruptly:
"Which is the friend whose little ones you envy? You have made me wish to see them and her?"
"That is Elena—beside Gervasio." She indicated a young woman with soft, patient, brown eyes, the dignity of her race and the sweetness of young motherhood, who would have looked little older than herself had it not been for an already shapeless figure. "I can take you to-morrow to see them if you wish."
She had cast down her eyes and her face was white. Still he groped on.