IX

Doña Eustaquia seldom gave balls, but once a week she opened her salas
to the more intellectual people of the town. A few Americans were ever
attendant; General Vallejo often came from Sonoma to hear the latest
American and Mexican news in her house; Castro rarely had been absent;
Alvarado, in the days of his supremacy, could always be found there, and
she was the first woman upon whom Pio Pico called when he deigned to
visit Monterey. A few young people came to sit in a corner with Benicia,
but they had little to say.

The night after the picnic some fifteen or twenty people were gathered
about Doña Eustaquia in the large sala on the right of the hall; a few
others were glancing over the Mexican papers in the little sala on the
left. The room was ablaze with many candles standing, above the heads
of the guests, in twisted silver candelabra, the white walls reflecting
their light. The floor was bare, the furniture of stiff mahogany and
horse-hair, but no visitor to that quaint ugly room ever thought of
looking beyond the brilliant face of Doña Eustaquia, the lovely eyes of
her daughter, the intelligence and animation of the people she gathered
about her. As a rule Doña Modeste Castro's proud head and strange beauty
had been one of the living pictures of that historical sala, but she was
not there to-night.

As Captain Brotherton and Lieutenant Russell entered, Doña Eustaquia was
waging war against Mr. Larkin.

"And what hast thou to say to that proclamation of thy little American