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The muscles in Dona Ignacia's cheeks fell an inch as she listened, dumbfounded, to the tale her husband poured out. To her simple aristocratic soul Rezanov had loomed too great a personage to dream of mating with a Californian; and as her sharp maternal instinct had recognized his personal probity, even his gallantries had seemed to her no more consequent than the more catholic trifling of his officers.
"Holy Mary! " she whimpered, when her voice came back. "Holy Mary! A heretic! And he would take our Concha from us! And she would go! To St. Petersburg! Ten thousand miles! To the priests with her -- now -- this very day!"