CHAPTER XI
SAN FRANCISCO IS NAMED
Evening on the Windham rancho. Far below, across a vast green stretch of meadow sloping toward the sea, the sun sank into crimson canopies of cloud. It was one of those perfect days which come after the first rains, mellow and exhilarating. The Trio in the rose arbor of the patio were silent under the spell of its beauty. Don Roberto Windham, home again, after long months of wandering and hardship, stood beside the chair in which Senora Windham rested against a pillow. She had mended much since his return, and her eyes as she looked up at him held the same flashing, fiery tenderness which in the long ago had caused her to renounce Castilian traditions and become the bride of an Americano. At her feet upon a low stool sat her daughter, Inez, and Windham, as he looked down, was a little startled at her likeness to the Spanish beauty he had met and married a generation before.
Conscious of his glance, her eyes turned upward and she held out her hand to him. "Father, mine," she said in English, "you have made the roses bloom again in mother's cheeks. And in my heart," she added with a quick, impulsive tenderness.
Robert Windham bent and kissed her wind-tossed hair. "I think another has usurped me in the latter task." He smiled, although not without a touch of sadness. "Ah, well, Adrian is a fine young fellow. You need not blush so furiously."
"I think he comes," said the Senora Anita, and, unconsciously, her arm went around the girl. "Is not that his high-stepping mare and his beanpole of a figure riding beside Benito in yon cloud of dust?"
She smiled down at Inez. "Do not mind your mother's jesting--Go now to smooth your locks and place a rose within them--as I used to do when Don Roberto came."
Inez rose and made her way into the casa. She heard a clatter of hoofs and voices. At the sound of one her heart leaped strangely.
"We have famous news," she heard her brother say. "The name of Yerba Buena has been changed to San Francisco. Here is an account of it in Brannan's California Star." She heard the rustle of a paper then, once more her brother's voice: "San Francisco!" he pronounced it lovingly. "Some day it will be a ciudad grande--perhaps even in my time."