Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
As she approached Russell he took a rose from his coat and threw it at her. She caught it, thrust it carelessly in one of her thick braids, and the next moment he was at her side again. Doña Eustaquia slipped from the crowd and out of the house. Drawing a reboso about her head she walked swiftly down the street and across the plaza.
She hated their rich breeches and embroidered jackets buttoned with silver and gold, the lace handkerchiefs knotted about their shapely throats. No man was a man who did not wear a uniform. Don Fernando regarded her with a mischievous smile as she approached him a second time. "I predict, also," he said, "I predict that our charming Doña Eustaquia will yet wed an American "
Hast thou had thy silly head turned with a kiss? Not one shirt shall go in this water." Mariquita tossed her head defiantly. "Captain Brotherton say the Indian women break his clothes in pieces. They know not how to wash anything but dish-rags. And does he not go to marry our Doña Eustaquia?" "The Captain is not so bad," admitted Faquita.
Eustaquia, to think that it was opposite our own dear home, our favourite home, that the American flag should first have been raised! Opposite the home of José Castro!" "To perdition with Frémont! Why did he, of all places, select San Juan Bautista in which to hang up his American rag?" "We never can live there again. The Gabilan Mountains would shut out the very face of the sun from my husband."
But she was haunted by a suspicion that there was more behind, and to come. Pilar de la Torre and Eustaquia Carillo were the two most notable girls in the convent, for they easily took precedence of their more indolent mates and were constantly racing for honours. There the resemblance ended.
Brown old men and women stared gloomily at the floor. But the greater number followed every motion of their master-spirit, Doña Eustaquia Ortega. She walked rapidly up and down the long room, too excited to sit down, flinging the mantilla back as it brushed her hot cheek. She was a woman not yet forty, and very handsome, although the peachness of youth had left her face.
God of my soul!" she threw a handful of yellow sewing-silk upon a piece of white satin; "Ana shall embroider this gown, the golden poppies of California on a bank of mountain snow." She suddenly seized a case of topaz and a piece of scarlet silk and ran over to me: I being a Montereña, etiquette forbade me to purchase in Santa Barbara. "Thou must have these, my Eustaquia.
Benicia gave her orders, Raphael and the other Indians followed her with the baskets, and spread the supper of tomales and salads, dulces and wine, on a large table-like rock, just above the threatening spray; the girls sang each in turn, whilst the others nibbled the dainties Doña Eustaquia had provided, and the Americans wondered if it were not a vision that would disappear into the fog bearing down upon them.
"Thou wilt, my Eustaquia. Doña Chonita is no pudding-brained girl. She needs no dueña." "I know that; but it is not that I am thinking of. Suppose some one sees you; thou knowest the inflexibility of our conventions." "You forget that we are comadre and compadre. Our privileges are many." He abruptly dismissed the intimate "thou," with his usual American perversity. "True; I had forgotten.
But I am Eustaquia Ortega, and as I am make, so I do feel now. No judge too hard, my friend, and infelez de mi! do not forsake me." "I will never forsake you, Eustaquia." He rose suddenly. "I, too, am a lonely man, if not a hard one, and I recognize that cry of the soul's isolation." He left her and went up the hill to Benicia's little house, half hidden by the cypress trees that grew before it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking