"Señorita, there is no more to tell," remarked Keith, coldly; "not even so much as Angela would suggest. My brother and an old priest and I lost our way in the hills; and seeing a light, we chanced on some religious meeting of a strange hill tribe of Indians. They thought we were spies of the Church or the government, and there was trouble. A lady, whom the Indians and the priest called by the name you heard, saved us all that night. She was the one person of the Catholic Church they would allow to know them well, and she was a nun or a novice."
"Santa Maria! and she gave you rings?"
"The ring was some talisman respected by the tribe. She put it on my finger after I had been struck down and—well—used up. It stopped them when words were of no use. We made a litter for the old priest, and tied Teddy on a burro,—he had a leg wound,—and we walked beside them over the wilderness trail until dawn came, and we met help. I fainted from loss of blood about that time, and Teddy and I recuperated in the house of the old priest. We never saw the lady again."
"You never saw her again after an adventure like that!" cried Fernando in amaze. "That is cold blood for you!"
"It may be that she was ugly—or old," suggested Rafael.
"On the contrary, she was so charming that he shouted for her in the delirium of the fever; that is how Teddy learned that she was the one exception among girls! But all their scheming could not learn her name from the priest or the Mexicans. 'Doña Espiritu' was all they ever heard. Teddy fancied they had shipped her to Spain for the adventure with a heretic that one night."
"Is it all true, señor?" asked Dolores. "Doña Angela laughs at it, and you frown; and between the two, how are we to know how serious it may all be to you?"
"Serious enough to make him bare his head at every old battered shrine for her sake," said Angela, with a little shrug; "and an old ring of his mother's was lost from his finger on that wilderness trail, while the Mexican eagle took its place. Oh, nuns are only women after all, and much can happen in the length of a Mexican night!"
"Well, señor," said Dolores, with sudden courage, "I am a good Catholic, thank God! and I see no sacrilege in the sort of love for which a man bares his head at a shrine. Señor Bryton, the story will make us of California more than ever your friends!"
"Sure," agreed Don Antonio.