"There are others beyond the Alleghanies. We of the West are not sold to the shipping trade."
"No; you do not take by commerce. You have ever been given to taking by force."
"We have conquered the Indian with our rifles, and the wilderness with our axes."
"Yet you turned to your East for it to buy you Louisiana, through a conspiracy with that arch-liar the Corsican!"
"No conspiracy, señorita! It is well known that Napoleon bought Louisiana from Spain for the sole purpose of extending his empire to the New World. It was the fear of losing New Orleans to England that induced him to sell the Territory to us—that alone."
"Yet he had given his pledge to my country not to sell!"
"Let your people look to it that he does not sell Spain itself."
"Ah, my poor country!" she murmured, and her head sank forward.
"I had gathered that your uncle was among those who seek to free Mexico from Spanish rule," I said.
"Those whose misrule rests so heavily upon my people in New Spain have little more regard for the welfare of my people in the mother country."
Again there was silence between us, this time until the close of the bishop's sermon. As the prelate left the stand, the Irishwoman turned about with an expectant look.
"Enough of this mockery!" said the señorita.
I stepped down at the word, and had the pleasure of receiving her hand the second time. She made no objection to my escorting her from the hall and to the outer door. In the portico she stopped for the Irishwoman to come up on her other hand.
"You have my thanks, señor," she said.
I was not prepared to receive my dismissal so soon.
"With your kind permission, señorita, I will see you to your door," I ventured, astonished at my own audacity.
Whatever her own feeling, she turned without so much as a lift of her black eyebrows, and signed the woman to drop behind again. We descended the marble steps together, and passed down a side street. She walked as she spoke, flowingly, her step the perfect poetry of motion as her voice was the poetry of sound. Her mere presence at my side should have been enough to content me. But my thoughts returned to the dismal news of her intended departure.
"You go within the week?" I questioned.
"Without regret," she replied.
I passed over the thrust. "You have been nowhere. It must have been dull."
"Less so than may be thought. I have spent much of my time in the company of Mrs. Merry."
"Lord have mercy upon us!" I mocked. "If you have been imbibing the opinions of the Lady of the British Legation—!"
"I have heard some sharp truths regarding the ridiculousness of your republican regime."
"And could tell of as many, from your own observation, regarding the Court of St. James."
It was a chance shot, but it hit the mark.
"I had not thought you so quick," she said, with a note of sincerity under the mockery.
"I am not quick, señorita," I replied. "It is no more than the reflection of your own wit."
"That does not ring true."
"It is true that you raise me above my dull self."
"Have I said that I have found you dull?"
"I have never succeeded in acquiring the modish smartness of the gallants and the wits."
"That, señor, is beyond the power of a man to acquire." I looked for mockery in her eyes, and saw only gravity. The scarlet lips were curved in scorn, but not of myself. "It is only those born as brainless magpies who can chatter. You were right when you said that I could tell of truths from my own observation. I left England with as little regret as I shall—"
"Do not say it, señorita!" I protested.
"You Americans! You have the persistence of the British, with no small share of French alertness!"
"We are a mixed people—" I began.
"Mongrel!" she thrust at me, with a flash of hauteur.
"Not so ill a name for a race," I replied. "History tells of a people called Iberians. The Ph[oe]nicians and Carthagenians landed on their shores. Then came the Romans; later, the barbaric hordes from the North—Goths, Vandals, Suevi; later still, the Moors."
The last was too much for her restraint. "Moors!—Moors! Mohammedan slaves!" she exclaimed. "We drove them out—man, woman, and child—before your land was so much as discovered."
"Yet not before they had done what little could be done toward civilizing barbaric Europe, and not before their blood had mingled—"
"Santisima Virgen!" she cried, in a passion which was all the more striking for the restraint that held it in leash—"I, a daughter of such blood!—you say it?"
"I do not say it, señorita," I replied, with such steadiness as I could command under the flashing anger of her glance.
"Then what?" she demanded.
"I spoke of your race in general, señorita. There are self-evident facts. Even were the fact which you so abhor true as to yourself, would your eyes be any the less wondrously glorious? Your dusky hair—"
She burst into a rippling laugh, more musical than the notes of any instrument. "Santa Maria!" she murmured. "You miss few opportunities—for an Anglo-American!"
"A man asks only for reasonable opportunities, señorita—a fair field and no favors."
"The last is easy to grant."
"You mean—?"
"No favors."
She had me hard. I rallied as best I could. "But a fair field—?"
"Can there be such?" she countered. "You are Anglo-American; I am Spanish."
"Vallois has a French sound."
Her chin rose a trifle higher. "It is a name that crowns the most glorious pages in the history of France."
I thought of St. Bartholomew, and smiled grimly. "I, too, can trace back to one ancestor of French blood. He died by command of Charles de Valois. He was a shoemaker and a Huguenot."
She looked at me with a level gaze. "It is evident you are one who does not fear to face the truth. You have yourself named the barrier and the gulf between us."
"Barriers have been leaped; gulfs spanned."
"None such as these!"
"Señorita, we each had four grandparents, they each had four. That is sixteen in the fourth generation back. How many in ten generations? Who can say he is of this blood or that?"
"I do not pretend to the skill to refute specious logic, and—here is the gate. My thanks to you."
"Señorita!" I protested.
"Adios, señor! Open your eyes to the barrier and the gulf."
"I see them, and they shall not stop me from crossing!" Again I encountered the inscrutable glance that opened to me the darkness in the fathomless depths of her eyes. "I swear it!" I vowed.
Still gazing full at me, she replied: "It may be that in the Spring we shall pass through New Orleans."
I would have protested—asked for a word more to add to this meagre information. But she turned in at the gate, and the Irishwoman was at my elbow.
"Till then, if not before, au revoir,