She walked slowly through the willows, enjoying the shade.  Her fine old head was held sternly back, and her shoulders were as square as her youngest son’s; but she sighed a little, and pressed a willow branch to her face with a caressing motion.  She looked up to the gray peak standing above its fellows, bare, ugly, gaunt.  She was not an imaginative woman, but she always had felt in closer kinship with that solitary peak than with her own blood.  As she left the wood and saw the gay cavalcade about to start—­the burnished horses, the dashing caballeros, the girls with their radiant faces and jaunty habits—­she sighed again.  Long ago she had been the bride of a brilliant young Mexican officer for a few brief years; her youth had gone with his life.

She avoided the company and went round to the buildings at the back of the house.  Approving here, reproaching there, she walked leisurely through the various rooms where the Indians were making lard, shoes, flour, candles.  She was in the chocolate manufactory when her husband found her.

“Come—­come at once,” he said.  “I have good news for thee.”

She followed him to his room, knowing by his face that tragedy had visited them.  But she was not prepared for the tale he poured forth with violent interjections of English and Spanish oaths.  She had detected a flirtation between her daughter and the uninvited guest, and not approving of flirtations, had told Joaquin to keep his eyes upon them when hers were absent; but that the man should dare and the girl should stoop to think of marriage wrought in her a passion to which her husband’s seemed the calm flame of a sperm-candle.

“What!” she cried, her hoarse voice breaking.  “What!  A half-breed aspire to a Cortez!” She forgot her husband’s separateness with true Californian pride.  “My daughter and the son of an Indian!  Holy God!  And she has dared!—­she has dared!  The little imbecile!  The little—­But,” and she gave a furious laugh, “she will not forget again.”

She caught the greenhide reata from the nail and went up the stair.  Crossing the library with heavy tread, as if she would stamp her rage through the floor, she turned the key in the door of her daughter’s room and strode in.  The girl still lay on the floor, although consciousness had returned.  As Elena saw her mother’s face she cowered pitifully.  That terrible temper seldom dominated the iron will of the woman, but Santiago had shaken it a few days ago, and Elena knew that her turn had come.

Dona Jacoba shut the door and towered above her daughter, red spots on her face, her small eyes blazing, an icy sneer on her mouth.  She did not speak a word.  She caught the girl by her delicate shoulder, jerked her to her feet, and lashed her with the heavy whip until screams mingled with the gay laughter of the parting guests.  When she had beaten her until her own arm ached, she flung her on the bed and went out and locked the door.