Ella vierte la copa de amargura
Gota, gota en mi pobre corozon.
CHAPTER XVII
That same evening a gay party from the south rode along the sea to San Juan Capistrano. Doña Maria and Don Eduardo rode in a carriage, but the Doña Angela had received riding lessons from Rafael, and disdained now the lounging ease of the cushioned seats. She and Rafael galloped far ahead at times, and then loitered idly among the odorous grasses and chaparral, and watched the waves roll in, and said the gay, foolish things that sometimes mean only courtesy, and sometimes mean the ripples of thought fringing pools of unsounded depths. There was little doubt of the quality of Rafael's thought. Whatever it had been in the commencement, there was little now within his power to accomplish which he would not have done at the bidding of her smiling childish lips.
"If we had a boat out there where the whitecaps are, we could go even faster than the horses," she was saying. "I always wanted a boat; I always wanted to live near the ocean, if only the right people could be with me."
"You shall have a boat, any day you want it," he said, eagerly. "They make them at San Pedro; that is not far to send. A boat, and a house by the sea! Why not wish for a more difficult thing? Would you like that bluff above the river's mouth? Or Dana's Point, beyond there? You could watch the whales spouting from the quay, and all the sea and valley could be yours at a glance, and—"
"And a fine view, also, of your monastery walls, far, far away, Don Rafael."
"I should never be far away, only as far as you bid me go."
"Ah! that sounds very submissive," she replied; "but you are not really so, not really. I—I want to say to you that my cousin's wife reproves me for your—your—"