The Splendid Idle Forties | Page 6

with her undulating hips. Her eyes grew brighter, her lips redder. The young men who stood near gave as loud a vent to their admiration as if she had been dancing El Son alone on the floor. But the man without made no sign.
After the dance was over, General Castro led her to her due?a, and handing her a guitar, begged a song.
She began a light love-ballad, singing with the grace and style of her Spanish blood; a little mocking thing, but with a wild break now and again. As she sang, she fixed her eyes coquettishly on the adoring face of Guido Caba?ares, who stood beside her, but saw every movement of the form beyond the window. Don Guido kept his ardent eyes riveted upon her but detected no wandering in her glances. His lips trembled as he listened, and once he brushed the tears from his eyes. She gave him a little cynical smile, then broke her song in two. The man on the corridor had vaulted through the window.
Ysabel, clinching her hands the better to control her jumping nerves, turned quickly to Caba?ares, who had pressed behind her, and was pouring words into her ear.
"Ysabel! Ysabel! hast thou no pity? Dost thou not see that I am fit to set the world on fire for love of thee? The very water boils as I drink it--"
She interrupted him with a scornful laugh, the sharper that her voice might not tremble. "Bring me my pearls. What is love worth when it will not grant one little desire?"
He groaned. "I have found a vein of gold on my rancho. I can pick the little shining pieces out with my fingers. I will have them beaten into a saddle for thee--"
But she had turned her back flat upon him, and was making a deep courtesy to the man whom General Castro presented.
"I appreciate the honour of your acquaintance," she murmured mechanically.
"At your feet, se?orita," said Don Vicente.
The art of making conversation had not been cultivated among the Californians, and Ysabel plied her large fan with slow grace, at a loss for further remark, and wondering if her heart would suffocate her. But Don Vicente had the gift of words.
"Se?orita," he said, "I have stood in the chilling fog and felt the warmth of your lovely voice at my heart. The emotions I felt my poor tongue cannot translate. They swarm in my head like a hive of puzzled bees; but perhaps they look through my eyes," and he fixed his powerful and penetrating gaze on Ysabel's green depths.
A waltz began, and he took her in his arms without asking her indulgence, and regardless of the indignation of the mob of men about her. Ysabel, whose being was filled with tumult, lay passive as he held her closer than man had ever dared before.
"I love you," he said, in his harsh voice. "I wish you for my wife. At once. When I saw you to-day standing with a hundred other beautiful women, I said: 'She is the fairest of them all. I shall have her.' And I read the future in"--he suddenly dropped the formal "you"--"in thine eyes, cari?a. Thy soul sprang to mine. Thy heart is locked in my heart closer, closer than my arms are holding thee now."
The strength of his embrace was violent for a moment; but Ysabel might have been cut from marble. Her body had lost its swaying grace; it was almost rigid. She did not lift her eyes. But De la Vega was not discouraged.
The music finished, and Ysabel was at once surrounded by a determined retinue. This intruding Southerner was welcome to the honours of the race-field, but the Star of Monterey was not for him. He smiled as he saw the menace of their eyes.
"I would have her," he thought, "if they were a regiment of Castros--which they are not." But he had not armed himself against diplomacy.
"Se?or Don Vicente de la Vega y Arillaga," said Don Guido Caba?ares, who had been selected as spokesman, "perhaps you have not learned during your brief visit to our capital that the Se?orita Do?a Ysabel Herrera, La Favorita of Alta California, has sworn by the Holy Virgin, by the blessed Junipero Serra, that she will wed no man who does not bring her a lapful of pearls. Can you find those pearls on the sands of the South, Don Vicente? For, by the holy cross of God, you cannot have her without them!"
For a moment De la Vega was disconcerted.
"Is this true?" he demanded, turning to Ysabel.
"What, se?or?" she asked vaguely. She had not listened to the words of her protesting admirer.
A sneer bent his mouth. "That you have put a price upon yourself? That the man who ardently wishes to be your husband, who has