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The Spanish Revolt of 1 836
(Kalem)
By JOHN OLDEN
From the Scenario of Capt. Chas. Kiener
Bent over the alcalde's carved table, Isabella wrote a few words rapidly, then chewed the plumage of her quill thoughtfully for the best part of an hour. What she had written to Olivia was short enough, in words, yet big with meaning. Womanlike, it was penned in the form of an avowal — a confidential one, which she trusted would be published to all the world. Hence her editorial circumspection.
She picked the letter up for the thirteenth time and searched it for a flaw. "This is to remind you of tomorrow's garden festival," she read, "and that you must not fail to be with me. Motherless as I am, your presence is always a safeguard against my too ardent suitors. To them, I fear, I feel capricious and cruel ; yet I love only my freedom. ' '
"Capricious," she mused, "is not a satisfactory word to a man. It suggests too many others besides himself." She crossed it out to substitute "hard-hearted."
"I will not marry," she continued reading, "and I am capable of loving only such a man whose qualities and deeds place him above the average caballero. ' '
"Sounds too hopeless," she criticised, "and too much like a pronunciamiento of the government."
"Without love" was prefixed to the unfeeling sentence. "There, it's finished!" she sighed. "Henceforth, I suppose, all of my suitors will expose hidden qualities and promise to perform deeds."
Olivia, in her flower-walled patio, read the letter thru with amusement. "Such a child," she thought; "so artless." Something made her read it thru again more carefully, and she added, "and so deep."
"The world's her plaything," she meditated, deep in a rush chair, ' ' and
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as for Juan Alvarado, my cousin, it is a musty matter of keeping to his books. The vista of Monterey has never been painstaking before : why should he?
"Ah, well!" she sighed, "tomorrow, when she is importuned by all the gallants in town, perhaps she will start his heart to singing. Who knows ? ' '
With the morrow she hastened to the home of the venerable alcalde, who stood on the steps with Isabella, welcoming their guests.
"Sweet one," she whispered, "I have read thy letter — 'tis locked in my bosom, never fear ! ' '
Isabella, as fresh as an opening rose, could not conceal her pout of chagrin at this information, so she kist her warmly. "I knew I could trust you," she answered promptly, tho to Olivia it seemed without the appreciation due.
The young men of the capital, coming up by twos and threes, with sweeping doffs of sombreros, interrupted further confidences. They grouped around her, with hand on hip and much posturing, for all the world like pheasants to be fed from the fingers of a royal mistress. She met their soft glances with the level eyes of a swordsman — laughing all the while.
Juan Alvarado had not come, and, altho she pictured him a strange figure, stalking in dull clothes a head above these brave cacklers, she missed him, and waited until all had been greeted, and some had stayed spellbound— waited as if all had not been fulfilled.
Presently Olivia saw him coming, bringing some rare wild roses which grew on his ranch of Los Nietos — an odd name, that, "The Grandson," but no more odd than its owner, the self-imposed student of Monterey.