The padre himself rode away very early. Don Enrico lent him a horse to ride to San Juan, and wondered a little that the San Gabriel people had not done as much; but times were changing in the land. One could not expect the old customs to live when so many strangers were crowding into the country.

The offered horse was accepted gratefully, and the padre breakfasted with the vaqueros, and left for the south before the family were astir. Bryton watched him go, but lingered for a sight of Ana, that he might hear how the night had passed inside the window of the golden rose.

And Ana was the last to join the party at breakfast, but was a very happy creature, compared with the nervous, pale woman of the night before. All were astonished at the fact that Raquel announced that she had slept like a child and all the illness and fever were forgotten. She was not sure but that she could ride to San Juan, and above all things she was grateful to Ana, and wished both the girls to go with her and visit in the old Mission.

The servants were again the quiet listless folk they had been before the finding of the witch charm. But as Bryton rode out of the patio after many farewells and blessings from DoÑa Refugia, and cordial invitations from Don Enrico to ride back that way, and consider the place as his own home, there were sullen scowls among the dark people.

On the veranda Juanita stood alone and waved an adios to him. Back of her was the open window of the golden rose, and a slender girlish figure swayed toward him for an instant and then stood erect, and their eyes met and lingered, while he swept his sombrero to the stirrup.

Juanita wondered, since he saluted so gallantly and rode with his face turned toward her veranda until the hedge intervened, why he did not smile; she was accustomed to gayer caballeros. She realized that she must have looked very pretty in her pink gown framed in the blossoming vines, and she turned away with a pout and a shrug. After all, Fernando was right: American men did not know how to make love.

Raquel was rather pale and very quiet that morning, but insisted upon staying up; she even remembered to ask what the loud calling and running of many feet had meant the evening before; or had she dreamed it? She supposed it was a stampede of horses—was it? Was any one hurt? She had heard the voices of women.

Ana told her it was only the breaking loose of part of a wild herd, but that no one was injured. Old Polonia heard, and blinked and scowled at Ana, but said nothing.

It was noon when Rafael reached the ranch and caught sight of Raquel in a porch-chair under the vines. She paled slightly at sight of him, and turned the onyx ring so that the carving did not show, and by the time he had crossed the patio and walked to join them, her face was a serene mask. The only surprise she betrayed was at the dark look he cast on Ana.

"Are you two in a politician's pay, that you bring me from Los Angeles in a fright of life and death, when I am needed every minute there for the business matters?" he demanded, and saw in a moment that his wife did not understand. Ana only laughed. "I did it," she acknowledged. "I sent the boy with some truths for you. Your wife was like to die the first night she came. It is by the grace of God she has been saved from a siege of fever. She does not know in the least how ill she was, but if you had heard her gabbling of blood-stained altars and strange wedding-rings, and floods sweeping over her until she screamed to be saved from them,—well, Don Rafael, you might well have forgotten to spare your horse. Three hours would have brought a lover here, but it takes thirty for the husband."

"Why do you two quarrel always?" asked Raquel, indifferently. "I did not know she had sent for you. I was very tired, and the hot sun—something—oh yes, I was ill, and wakened myself screaming. But it is all gone. I can go home."

Rafael tramped the veranda and sulked.

"A fine laugh you have made for me in Los Angeles! They will think you were sick, that I follow my wife!" he said, frowning at Ana. "God of my soul! Why do you not get another husband to worry into the grave, and let your neighbors alone?"

She only laughed again, and bent over her embroidery frame, where white butterflies were being woven on the drawn threads of linen.

"Because no fine, manly, handsome caballero like yourself rides this way to ask me," she retorted. "All the most desirable men are always married."

"The SeÑor Bryton was here for the night," remarked Juanita.

"Oh, he was? Alone?" asked Rafael.

Juanita nodded. "And a priest," she added. "They both rode south."

"Bryton alone?" mused Rafael. "I thought perhaps—Did any strangers ride south last night,—a large party?"

No one had heard of any one passing.

"DoÑa Maria comes in a carriage by this morning," he remarked, "and Mrs. Bryton. I suppose they will want you to travel in their carriage, if you feel equal to the drive to San Juan."

"Oh, she must not go to-day—not for anything!" decided DoÑa Refugia, who had come from the hall and overheard. "DoÑa Maria and her friend can stop here a few days, and then perhaps if your wife is strong enough—"

"Certainly, that is the best, the very best," assented Rafael, with a smile of relief. DoÑa Refugia was making it necessary that Raquel should at least meet the friends of DoÑa Maria. All was turning out well, after all.

Raquel made no remark, only looked out idly across the garden to the fields, yellow where the mustard bloom glowed. She knew she could not bear it just yet. Later, perhaps, she could grow strong enough to see Bryton's wife, and hear her voice cut across the days and the dusks here, where his whispers had awakened her to life—some day, perhaps; but she knew it could not be either to-day or to-morrow.

Her husband watched her curiously. If she would only give some sign of what she felt, as another woman would do! How was a man to read a woman who stared out on life like a sphinx, seeing nothing and hearing nothing?

In the same way, she had seemed a bit of wood over that old legend of the curse on San Juan: it had not changed in the least her determination to go back there; yet, since she had screamed of it in a fever, who was to know what feeling it had awakened back of those fathomless violet eyes?

Rafael turned this theory over in his mind, and smoked several cigarros to help to solve the problem, but it was of no use. It had been a very fine marriage for him. Her visit to Los Angeles had further emphasized that fact; but he had the galling feeling of being only prince-consort to the queen, and it was not so pleasant to a man who had been shown favor of a different sort by many women who would have been glad to give him the king's place.

To marry a girl who is like a wooden saint in a church may be a victory; it may be even romantic when she is half a nun; but it is not comforting to a husband who expects only a wife, a home.

Then across his thoughts came the blue eyes and yellow hair of the woman he had said a reluctant good-bye to in Los Angeles. There was a woman who would have met all his friends half-way, would have promoted his interests, instead of closing doors and refusing to entertain any but the slow old Spanish, who were letting all the money slip out of their hands. In a few years their names would be forgotten in the new world of commerce building, through the Americanos in Los Angeles,—the Americanos whom his wife disdained, but whom the clever little woman of the blue eyes would have won to his interests in so many ways that her influence would have weighed down all the gold of the Estevan heiress, who did not know how to use it. It is only a trick of fate that the money always goes to the wrong people.

So he thought, and smoked, and looked at Raquel Estevan de Arteaga, and wondered by what manoevre or stratagem he could break down her prejudices; he wondered, also, how a woman with such eyes and such lips could be so cold. He supposed it was inherited from the nun, her mother.

Rafael had never heard the story of the love, and revenge, and widowhood of that nun. One or two of the older people of San Juan had heard of it at the time of Estevan's death, but none knew how true it was. It seemed too much a bit out of the dark ages of the Indian records to be true of the debonair Felipe, who had ridden and fought to the admiration of all Californian Mexico, who had found women wherever he rode, and had made love as a caballero's duty. It seemed scarcely credible that he, of all men, should have met death in that way on the far southern mountain; and the older men crossed themselves and tried to forget it, and the younger ones never heard of it.

Rafael, smoking on the veranda and watching the serene face of his wife, and ascribing her coldness to the chill of convent walls, understood her no more than had Felipe Estevan understood the nun who had stepped down from her saint's niche for him; and old Polonia, sitting in the shadow, watched them both, and in her dull brain was also a query: Would he ever discover that she was not cold? And would he find out in the same way? Both God and the devil would be needed to help them all on that day, for California was not the hill of the temple, where the Indian still ruled!

Rafael at last rode out to the range to see Don Enrico about several matters. He did not care to alarm the women concerning the rumors of the bandits, but now, since he had left Los Angeles behind, he would just as soon ride with the vigilantes as not, and Don Enrico could be trusted. It would be five long hours before the carriage with DoÑa Maria and her bewitching guest reached the ranch, and one must kill time some way.

He killed more time than he had counted upon. As the sun began to lower, and he and Don Enrico turned their horses for the ranch-house, the dogs started a coyote, and with one accord the Don, his guest, and his vaqueros, took up the trail, following the howls with hue and cry over mesa and along creeks, and by the time the dark had fallen, they were far toward Trabuco. They rode back laughing and singing, and making little dashes at racing, under the early stars.

But their laughter was changed when they rode into the corral. News had come from the south, and a bad thing had happened there. The sheriff from Los Angeles had been ambushed by the Flores men at Niguel Rancho, and nine men were lying dead there. Carts were on the way to take them to San Juan for Christian burial, and Bryton had sent a messenger to Los Angeles with the word; the man had only checked his horse at San Joaquin ranch to shout out the news; that was hours ago. The Indian who had searched the ranges for Don Enrico had come back and said he was not to be found. DoÑa Refugia had thought it possible that they had heard the word on the ranges and ridden direct to San Juan, and thanked God they had not done so.

She went on to recount to Rafael her terror of the night before, and the awful scene from which she had by no means recovered, and now for this horror to follow so close, and the dread that they might be left alone on the ranch—well, she was having chills at the thought. Ana was the only one not afraid, but with Ana gone to San Juan Capistrano—

Rafael grasped her arm so tightly that she gasped.

"To San Juan?" he demanded. "Alone?" But he was certain of the answer before she spoke.

"Holy Maria! What a grip you have! No. Did I not tell you? Well, we are crazy over it all; we forget. No; she went with your wife, and wild horses could not have held either one of them."

"A malediction on the pair of them!" burst out Rafael. "God curse the horses they ride, that they break their necks on the way!"

"Rafael, for Jesus' sake, not so loud!" and DoÑa Refugia tried to put her hand over his mouth, but he dashed it aside in fury.

"Loud! Holy God! What do I care?" he demanded, wrathfully. "Do you know why they go like that? It is all a lie, that ambush story. That devil Ana Mendez has schemed to have some one ride past and call that out to you, so that they could pretend an excuse to ride anywhere away from here; and do you know why?"

DoÑa Refugia was past speech, and could only shake her head dumbly.

"Well, I will tell you. It is because Raquel Estevan did not mean to meet the friends you said you would be pleased to entertain on their arrival from Los Angeles. DoÑa Maria she will speak to, but DoÑa Angela is one of the heretics she vows her doors will not open to. That is the reason."

"But, Rafael—"

"Now listen to me," and he turned his fierce stride across the hall, "and God curse me if I do not keep my word!"

"Rafael!" she gasped, frightened at the white fury of his face; but he held up his hand. "I swear she shall open her door to admit the women she slighted, first at Los Angeles and again in your home. She will find she has an Arteaga for a master. She shall open her door; she shall receive her; she shall make up for the insult to your home. By God, she shall make up, with interest!"

Then he strode out of the door, leaving DoÑa Refugia in a cold terror lest the guest of whom he spoke had heard his words through the closed door of Ana's room. It had been given to Mrs. Bryton on the arrival of the party an hour before, and though the door was closed, who could tell that his words might not have been heard there?

But the window on the veranda was open, and DoÑa Refugia breathed a sigh of relief when, a few minutes later, she saw Mrs. Bryton's fair face emerge from a bower of clematis in the garden. She had been admiring the beauty of the lilies out there, and looked like one herself,—so cool, so sweetly childish in her little appeals for admiration of the beautiful blooms she loved. Rafael met her there, and was enslaved anew by the blue eyes, as he bent over her tiny hand and kissed it furtively, and walked with her to show her DoÑa Refugia's carnation-beds, and under the starlight help her to see the beauties of the San Joaquin garden. But old Polonia, who had heard his words to DoÑa Refugia, and who watched the two walking in the starlight, muttered in her Indian jargon, "Have a care, Don Rafael; have a care!"

Despite Rafael's doubt, it was all true about the ambush. It was quite true, and very awful. It had occurred in the morning, and Bryton had missed it only by his stay that night at the ranch. But he was also quite right when he said the two girls had left the ranch for other reasons. Raquel was quietly preparing to leave, when the word came warranting her in taking Ana. The two rode south with few words, each so wrapped in her own reasons for going that she gave no thought to the reasons of the other.

They found the town panic-stricken. Don Juan Alvara was ill, and Padre Andros absent at San Luis Rey. Raquel rode into the plaza white and weak from the long ride, but sat erect to hear of the things done and the things needed for the dead.

It was almost dark. While Ysadora the cook prepared supper, Ana questioned concerning a padre who had ridden a San Joaquin horse to San Juan that morning, but no one had seen him. Later, the animal was found grazing along Trabuco Creek. Evidently, some one had passed with a wagon or a herd going south, and had given the padre help on the way; beyond that, no one thought, except Ana, and what she thought she did not say.

Raquel walked through the little hall of the Mission into what had once been the garden of the padres, the little enclosed bit at the back of the belfry built after the falling of the tower. It was the one little corner from which the world seemed shut out. Under the carved doorway she passed into the old domed vestry with its stone centre cut, or worn by the dripping water, into the semblance of a leering face; "the devil's face," it was called, and people looked from its queer smile to the twisted serpent-like carving over what had once been the arch to the church itself, and wondered what the strange carvings meant, and found no one to answer. They were only a sign left by an unknown Mexican sculptor a half-century ago.

Raquel glanced at them and shuddered, and passed out into the great unroofed, beautiful place of fluted pillars and carven cornices.

The pink reflection of the sunset yet lingered on the mesa and the highlands above the sea. The world of the strange new town to the north was left behind. Here among the ruins consecrated, she breathed the air of home-coming, and paced the old altar-place with noiseless step, and with closed eyes and hands clasped she murmured prayers not in the book, taught by the good nuns; and she drew great breaths of strength from the wine-like air, and knew that somewhere, riding the mesa, a man was remembering this hour of the rosary.

Ana found her later on the altar steps, with head bowed over her knees. Gaining no reply to questions, Ana felt that she had been weeping. She undressed her and put her to bed in the little chamber of the barred window facing the sea, and gave her all the care a devoted friend could in the grim isolation of the old walls.

And that was the home-coming of Raquel after her half-royal reception in the City of the Angels.