Thorpe slept little that night. He wandered about the sand hills until nearly dawn. It seemed to him that he had exhausted the category of possible ills; he could think of nothing else. After all, it did not matter. The woman alone mattered. He knew that when he had persuaded her to marry him (he never used the word “if”), he could control her imagination and make her happy; and no other man alive could do it. In twenty different ways he could make her forget everything but the fact that she was his wife.

The next day Nina did not appear until the party was gathered about the table for luncheon. She explained that she had slept late in order to be in good trim for the party that night, and had spent the rest of the morning making an alteration in her evening frock.

She nodded gaily to Thorpe, and took a seat some distance from him. She looked very pretty. Her spirits, like her colour, were high, her eyes brilliant. Nevertheless, there was a change in her, indefinable at first; then Thorpe decided that she had acquired a shade of defiance, of hardness.

But he had no time for thought. Mrs. Earle’s flashing eyes were challenging him on one side, Miss Hathaway’s fathomless orbs on the other. Opposite, Miss Shropshire, for the first time, displayed an almost feverish desire to engage his attention, and made herself uncommonly agreeable.

The afternoon was spent in packing and resting for the dance. The only woman to be seen without the tents was Miss Shropshire, who took Thorpe for a long walk and entertained him with many anecdotes of Nina’s eccentricities.

“She is very mutable,” said Thorpe, at length; “but I should not have called her eccentric.”

“Should not you?” demanded Miss Shropshire. “Now, I should. But then you have seen so much of the world, so many varieties of women. Nina seems very original to us out here. I often wonder, well as I know her, what she will say and do next. Oh, Mr. Thorpe, does not that ship look beautiful?”

But Thorpe, who found a certain satisfaction in talking of the beloved object, gently led her back to her former theme, and learned much of Nina’s childhood and school-girl pranks. There was no hint of the mystery, nor did he wish that there should be.

Shortly after supper they started on horseback for the Mission, the evening gear following in a wagon. Horses and conveyance had been sent by Don Tiburcio.

Nina rode between Mr. McLane and Captain Hastings, and kept them laughing heartily. The day had passed and Thorpe had not had a word with her. He rode last, with Miss Hathaway, glad of her society; for she never expected a man to talk when he was not in the mood. Scarcely a word passed between them; once or twice he had an uncomfortable impression that her large cold inscrutable eyes were watching him intently.

They rode through the heavy dusk of a Californian night, perfume and the odd abrupt sounds of the New World about them. The landscape took new form in the shadows. The stunted brush seemed to crouch and quiver, ready to spring. The owl hooted across the sandy waste; and coyotes yapped dismally. Many of the party were silent; but Nina’s fresh spontaneous laugh rang out every few moments, striking an incongruous note. California itself was a mystery in that hour and did not consort with the lighter mood of woman.

Suddenly they looked down upon the Mission. The church was dark, but the long wing beside it flared with light. They rode rapidly down the hill and across the valley. As they approached, they saw Don Tiburcio standing on the corridor before one of the open doors. He wore black silk short clothes and a lace shirt, his hair tied back with a ribbon. Diamonds blazed among his ruffles and on his long white hands.

As he was making one of his long and stately speeches, Miss Hathaway laid her hand on Thorpe’s arm.

“Take my advice,” she said, in her cool even tones. “Do not go near Nina to-night. Let her alone. I think she wishes it.”

Thorpe made no reply. Miss Hathaway might as well have asked him to hold his breath until the entertainment was over.

The ladies went at once to a large room set aside for their use and donned their evening frocks. These frocks were very simple for the most part, organdie or swiss, and they were adjusted casually before the solitary mirror.

Nina’s gown was of white nainsook ruffled to the waist with lace, and very full. The low cut bodice was gathered into the belt like a child’s. Sometime since a local goldsmith of much cunning had, out of a bar of native gold, fashioned for her three flexible serpents. She wore one through her hair, one on her left arm, and a heavier one about her waist.

“Dios de mi alma, Nina,” exclaimed Mrs. Earle; “you look like an imp to-night. What is the matter with you? Your eyes look—look—I hardly know what you do look like.”

“Are you well, Nina?” asked Miss Hathaway, turning and smiting the girl with her polaric stare. “Have not you a headache? Why not lie down and not bother with this ball?”

For a moment Nina did not reply. She brought her small teeth together, and looked into Miss Hathaway’s eyes with passionate resentment.

“Just mind your own business, will you?” she said, pitching her voice for the other woman’s ear alone. “And you’d oblige me by transfixing some one else for the rest of the evening. I’ve had enough of your attentions for one day.”

Then she shook out her skirts as only an angry woman can, and left the room.

“Nina is in one of her unpleasant moods to-night,” said Mrs. McLane, attempting a glimpse of herself over Miss McDermott’s shoulder, that she might adjust a hairpin. “I have not seen her like this for some time—seven weeks,” and she smiled.

“She looks like a little devil,” said Mrs. Earle. “I have not been here long enough to become intimate with her moods, and I must say I prefer her without them. What are you scowling about, ’Lupie? Is your sash crooked? Can I fix it? But I forgot: you are above such trifles—Holy Mary! Guadalupe Hathaway! what on earth is the matter with your back?”

“What?” asked Miss Hathaway, presenting her back squarely. There was a simultaneous chorus of shrieks.

“Guadalupe, for Heaven’s sake, what have you been doing?” cried Mrs. McLane. “Your back is striped—dark brown and white.”

“Oh, is that all?” asked Miss Hathaway, gathering up her fan and gloves. “I suppose it got sunburned this morning at croquet. I had on a blouse with alternate thick and thin stripes. Hasta luego!” and she moved out, not with any marked grace, but with a certain dignity which saved the stripes from absurdity.

“Bueno!” exclaimed Mrs. Earle, “I’d like to have as little vanity as that. How peaceful, and how cheap!”

“I suspect that it is her vanity to have no vanity,” said Mrs. McLane, who was the wisest of women. “And if she did not happen to be a remarkably handsome girl, I fancy her vanity would take another form. But come, come, mes enfants, let us go. I feel half dressed; but as this is a picnic I suppose it does not matter.”

The guests were assembled in the large hall of the Mission: Mr. Randolph’s party, Don Tiburcio’s, and several priests. The musicians were on the corridor beyond the open window. DoÑa Eustaquia, DoÑa Jacoba, DoÑa Prudencia, Mrs. Polk, and the priests sat on a dais at the end of the room; behind them was draped a large Mexican flag. The rest of the room was hung with the colours of the United States. The older women of the late rÉgime wore the heavy red and yellow satins of their time, the younger flowered silks, their hair massed high and surmounted by a comb. The caballeros were attired like their host.

The guests were standing about in groups after the second waltz, when Don Tiburcio stepped to the middle of the room and raised his hand.

“My friends,” he said, “my honoured compatriots, Don Hunt McLane and Don Jaime Randolph have request that we do have the contradanza. Therefore, if my honoured friends of America will but stand themselves against the wall, we of California will make the favourite dance of our country.”

The Americans clapped their hands politely. Don Tiburcio walked up to Mrs. Earle, bowed low, and held out his hand. She rattled her fan in token of triumph over her Northern sisters, and undulated to the middle of the room, her hand in her host’s.

The swaying, writhing, gliding dance—the dance in which the backbone of men and women seems transformed into the flexible length of the serpent—was half over, the American men were standing on tiptoe, occasionally giving vent to their admiration, when Nina, her eyes sparkling with jealously and excitement, moved along the wall behind a group of people and stood beside Thorpe. He did not notice her approach. His hands were thrust into his pockets, his eyes eagerly fixed on the most graceful feminine convolutions he had ever seen.

“Dudley!” whispered Nina. He turned with a jump, and forgot the dancers.

“Well?” he whispered. “Nina! Nina!”

She slipped her hand into his. He held it in a hard grip, his eyes burning down into hers. “Why—why?—I must respect your moods if you wish to avoid me at times—but—”

“Do you admire that?”

“I did—a moment ago.”

“Tell me how much.”

“More than any dancing I have ever seen, I think,” his eyes wandering back to the swaying colorous groups of dancers. “It is the perfection of grace—”

“Would you like to see something far, far more beautiful?”

“I fear I should go off my head—”

“Answer my question.”

“I should.”

“You say you respect my moods. I don’t want—I particularly don’t want to kiss you to-night. Will you promise not to kiss me if we should happen to be alone?”

Thorpe set his lips. He dropped her hand. “You are capricious—and unfair,” he said; “I have not seen you alone for two days.”

“It is not because I love you less,” she said, softly. “Promise me.”

“Very well.”

“It is now ten. We shall have supper at twelve. At one, go down the corridor behind this line of rooms to the end. Wait there for me. Ask no questions, or I won’t be there. This waltz is Captain Hastings’. I am engaged for every dance. Au revoir.”

Thorpe got through the intervening hours. He spent the greater part of them with the four doÑas of the dais, and was warmly invited to visit them on their ranchos and in the old towns; and he accepted, although he knew as much of the weather of the coming month as of his future movements.