Washington, could be gathered together a more cultured, a more polished, a more interesting, a more recherché assemblage than that which filled the Governor's palatial residence and vied with one another in doing homage to the winsome Indian maiden."

To call the Governor's residence "palatial" was part of the common law of Santa Fé journalism. In actual fact, it was a one-story, flat-roofed, adobe house, enclosing a placita, or little court, and having a portal, or roofed sidewalk, along its front.

When she first went to New Mexico, Mrs. Coolidge enjoyed transports of enthusiasm over the quaintness and picturesqueness of its alien modes of living. So she hunted all over Santa Fé for a house of the requisite age, dilapidation, and eventful history, to transform into her own home. And when at last she found this one, with an authenticated age of two hundred years, and a romance, a crime, or a startling event for almost every year in its history; with rough, irregular walls four feet thick; with tiny, unglazed, iron-barred windows,—then time stopped, it seemed to her, until the deed was recorded in her name.

With much sadness of heart she made sentiment give way to civilization and renovated the interior. Wooden floors, instead of the packed earth, hardened and glazed by the tread of many generations, plastered and papered ceilings and walls and ample windows gave to the inside of the house a modern air which its mistress deeply regretted, but accepted mournfully as a necessary evil. But she did not allow a weed or a blade of grass to be plucked from its roof; and upon the suggestion that the old brown adobe walls should be treated to a coat of gray plaster she frowned as if it had been blasphemy.

Upon the placita, which had been given over to weeds, tin cans, rags, and broken dishes, she lavished loving care and made it the blooming, fragrant heart of her home. In the centre was a locust tree of lusty growth, plumy of foliage and brilliant of color; and underneath the tree a little fountain shot upward a thin stream, which broke into a diamond shower and fell plashing back into a pool whose rim was outlined by a circle of purple-flowered iris. Around this spread a velvet turf, dotted with dandelions and English daisies. An irregular, winding path inclosed the tiny lawn, and all the space between the path and the narrow stone walk that hugged the four sides of the house was rich with roses. La France and American Beauty and Jacqueminot and many others were there in profusion and made the placita a thing of beauty from the time the frosts ended until they came again. A hand rail covered with climbing roses guarded the stone walk on three sides of the court, while the fourth side of the house was screened by a portal over which roses and honeysuckles clambered to the roof. Facing the wide, roofed passage which gave entrance from the street, stood an arch loaded with honeysuckle vines.

Mrs. Coolidge's enthusiasm over New Mexican history, and her admiration for the heroic times of the Conquistadores, had caused her to make the interior of her home almost a museum of antiquities. On the floors Navajo blankets—fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty years old, and each one with its own dramatic tale—served as rugs. Silken rebozos, worn by high-hearted cavaliers riding in search of "la gran Quivera" draped her windows. Pueblo pottery, dug from villages that were in ruins when the first white men saw them, filled cabinets and shelves. Saddle skirts of embroidered leather, which had pleased the fancy of some brave capitan leading a handful of men against a rebellious pueblo two centuries ago, made a background for the huge silver spurs of cunning workmanship with which some other daring caballero had urged his horse in search of adventures and of gold. And beside them lay the stone axe with which a courageous señora, a heroine of the Southwest, had cleft the skull of a Navajo chief and saved her townspeople from falling into the hands of the savage enemy. On the walls were old, old paintings of Nuestra Señora de this and that, proud of neck and sad and sweet of face, which had been brought from the City of Mexico on the backs of burros, and adored in little adobe churches by generations of men, women, and children, and pierced by the arrows of angry and revengeful Indians during the pueblo rebellion, or scarred by fires of destruction, from which they had been saved by brave and pious devotees.

Such things as these made a picturesque setting for the Indian maid on the night of her début. It might have been a painful ordeal for her had she known that all these people were there mainly to satisfy their curiosity concerning her. But Mrs. Coolidge had carefully kept from her the knowledge that she was of especial interest and was expected to produce a sensation. So she knew only that she was having a delightful time and that everybody was so kind and cordial and took so much interest in her that she did not have a minute during the whole evening in which to think about herself. Everybody was eager to dance, or talk, or stroll in the placita with her, and all who were not engaged with her were talking enthusiastically in praise of her appearance, her manner, or her conversation.

Colonel Kate moved about, proud and happy in the brilliant success of her hazardous undertaking and serene in the confidence that the Colonel's wife would not again attempt rebellion. She was even more glad and happy for Barbara's sake, for the two had grown very fond of each other and she had begun to wonder if old Ambrosio could not be induced to let her adopt the girl. Already it made her heart ache to think she might have to give up her protégée. She cast a glance at Barbara, who was holding her usual court, a circle of men about her, and thought:

"Nonsense! Old Ambrosio is not so stupid as to refuse his daughter such a chance as I can give her!"

For Colonel Kate, with all her cleverness, had never measured, or even imagined, the world-wide difference between the view-points of a pueblo chief and an ambitious white woman. So she felt happy and secure, as she smiled in response to one of Barbara's bright glances, and noticed that Lieutenant Wemple was still dancing close attendance upon her young friend.

Barbara was gowned very simply in white, and carried a bouquet of Jacqueminot roses. Her shining black hair was drawn back from her forehead in loose, waving masses and filleted with bands of silver filigree. The brown-faced girl, in her white dress with the glowing roses at her breast, made a pleasing picture as she stood beside a cabinet of pueblo pottery, against a Navajo portière. Lieutenant Wemple, who stood nearest her, thought that, altogether, it made the most striking and suggestive composition he had ever seen, and that he would like to see her portrait painted just as she stood there; but that would be impossible, for no artist could paint two girls into one figure. And she—at one moment she was a bronze figure, listening with drooped eyelids, closed lips, and impassive face, and the next she was vibrant with life; her big black eyes, which would have redeemed a countenance of less attractiveness than hers, sparkled and glowed; her face was radiant with eager interest; and the Lieutenant felt that beneath those rich red roses must beat a heart as glowing with warm bright life as they.

Santa Fé might be, geographically, far in the deeps of the red and woolly West, but the feminine portion of its social circles did not think that any reason why they should relapse into barbarism. And as one means of preventing such a dire catastrophe, they made the law of party calls even as the laws of the Medes and Persians. Among themselves the men might groan and swear and protest as much as they pleased, but if any one of them neglected that duty the ladies forthwith hurled him from the circles of the Select into the outer shades of the Unassorted. After the night of Barbara's success these