Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson Chaps 7-12

VII

IT was strange to see how quickly and naturally Alessandro fitted into his place in the household. How tangles straightened out, and rough places became smooth, as he quietly took matters in hand. Luckily, old Juan Can had always liked him, and felt a great sense of relief at the news of his staying on. Not a wholly unselfish relief, perhaps, for since his accident Juan had not been without fears that he might lose his place altogether; there was a Mexican he knew, who had long been scheming to get the situation, and had once openly boasted at a fandango, where he was dancing with Anita, that as soon as that superannuated old fool, Juan Canito, was out of the way, he meant to be the Seņora Moreno's head shepherd himself. To have seen this man in authority on the place, would have driven Juan out of his mind.

But the gentle Alessandro, only an Indian,--and of course the Seņora would never think of putting an Indian permanently in so responsible a position on the estate,--it was exactly as Juan would have wished; and he fraternized with Alessandro heartily from the outset; kept him in his room by the hour, giving him hundreds of long-winded directions and explanations about things which, if only he had known it, Alessandro understood far better than he did.

Alessandro's father had managed the Mission flocks and herds at San Luis Rey for twenty years; few were as skilful as he; he himself owned nearly as many sheep as the Seņora Moreno; but this Juan did not know. Neither did he realize that Alessandro, as Chief Pablo's son, had a position of his own not without dignity and authority. To Juan, an Indian was an Indian, and that was the end of it. The gentle courteousness of Alessandro's manner, his quiet behavior, were all set down in Juan's mind to the score of the boy's native amiability and sweetness. If Juan had been told that the Seņor Felipe himself had not been more carefully trained in all precepts of kindliness, honorable dealing, and polite usage, by the Seņora, his mother, than had Alessandro by his father, he would have opened his eyes wide. The standards of the two parents were different, to be sure; but the advantage could not be shown to be entirely on the Seņora's side. There were many things that Felipe knew, of which Alessandro was profoundly ignorant; but there were others in which Alessandro could have taught Felipe; and when it came to the things of the soul, and of honor, Alessandro's plane was the higher of the two. Felipe was a fair-minded, honorable man, as men go; but circumstances and opportunity would have a hold on him they could never get on Alessandro. Alessandro would not lie; Felipe might. Alessandro was by nature full of veneration and the religious instinct; Felipe had been trained into being a good Catholic. But they were both singularly pure-minded, open-hearted, generous-souled young men, and destined, by the strange chance which had thus brought them into familiar relations, to become strongly attached to each other. After the day on which the madness of Felipe's fever had been so miraculously soothed and controlled by Alessandro's singing, he was never again wildly delirious. When he waked in the night from that first long sleep, he was, as Father Salvierderra had predicted, in his right mind; knew every one, and asked rational questions. But the over-heated and excited brain did not for some time wholly resume normal action. At intervals he wandered, especially when just arousing from sleep; and, strangely enough, it was always for Alessandro that he called at these times, and it seemed always to be music that he craved. He recollected Alessandro's having sung to him that first night. "I was not so crazy as you all thought," he said. "I knew a great many of the things I said, but I couldn't help saying them; and I heard Ramona ask Alessandro to sing; and when he began, I remember I thought the Virgin had reached down and put her hand on my head and cooled it."

On the second evening, the first after the shearers had left, Alessandro, seeing Ramona in the veranda, went to the foot of the steps, and said, "Seņorita, would Seņor Felipe like to have me play on the violin to him tonight?"

"Why, whose violin have you got?" exclaimed Ramona, astonished.

"My own, Seņorita."

"Your own! I thought you said you did not bring it."

"Yes, Seņorita, that is true; but I sent for it last night, and it is here."

"Sent to Temecula and back already!" cried Ramona.

"Yes, Seņorita. Our ponies are swift and strong. They can go a hundred miles in a day, and not suffer. It was José brought it, and he is at the Ortega's by this time."

Ramona's eyes glistened. "I wish I could have thanked him," she said. "You should have let me know. He ought to have been paid for going."

"I paid him, Seņorita; he went for me," said Alessandro, with a shade of wounded pride in the tone, which Ramona should have perceived, but did not, and went on hurting the lover's heart still more.

"But it was for us that you sent for it, Alessandro; the Seņora would rather pay the messenger herself."

"It is paid, Seņorita. It is nothing. If the Seņor Felipe wishes to hear the violin, I will play;" and Alessandro walked slowly away.

Ramona gazed after him. For the first time, she looked at him with no thought of his being an Indian,--a thought there had surely been no need of her having, since his skin was not a shade darker than Felipe's; but so strong was the race feeling, that never till that moment had she forgotten it.

"What a superb head, and what a walk!" she thought. Then, looking more observantly, she said: "He walks as if he were offended. He did not like my offering to pay for the messenger. He wanted to do it for dear Felipe. I will tell Felipe, and we will give him some present when he goes away."

"Isn't he splendid, Seņorita?" came in a light laughing tone from Margarita's lips close to her ear, in the fond freedom of their relation. "Isn't he splendid? And oh, Seņorita, you can't think how he dances! Last year I danced with him every night; he has wings on his feet, for all he is so tall and big."

There was a coquettish consciousness in the girl's tone, that was suddenly, for some unexplained reason, exceedingly displeasing to Ramona. Drawing herself away, she spoke to Margarita in a tone she had never before in her life used. "It is not fitting to speak like that about young men. The Seņora would be displeased if she heard you," she said, and walked swiftly away leaving poor Margarita as astounded as if she had got a box on the ear.

She looked after Ramona's retreating figure, then after Alessandro's. She had heard them talking together just before she came up. Thoroughly bewildered and puzzled, she stood motionless for several seconds, reflecting; then, shaking her head, she ran away, trying to dismiss the harsh speech from her mind. "Alessandro must have vexed the Seņorita," she thought, "to make her speak like that to me." But the incident was not so easily dismissed from Margarita's thoughts. Many times in the day it recurred to her, still a bewilderment and a puzzle, as far from solution as ever. It was a tiny seed, whose name she did not dream of; but it was dropped in soil where it would grow some day,--forcing-house soil, and a bitter seed; and when it blossomed, Ramona would have an enemy.

All unconscious, equally of Margarita's heart and her own, Ramona proceeded to Felipe's room. Felipe was sleeping, the Seņora sitting by his side, as she had sat for days and nights,--her dark face looking thinner and more drawn each day; her hair looking even whiter, if that could be; and her voice growing hollow from faintness and sorrow.

"Dear Seņora," whispered Ramona, "do go out for a few moments while he sleeps, and let me watch,--just on the walk in front of the veranda. The sun is still lying there, bright and warm. You will be ill if you do not have air."

The Seņora shook her head. "My place is here," she answered, speaking in a dry, hard tone. Sympathy was hateful to the Seņora Moreno; she wished neither to give it nor take it. "I shall not leave him. I do not need the air."

Ramona had a cloth-of-gold rose in her hand. The veranda eaves were now shaded with them, hanging down like a thick fringe of golden tassels. It was the rose Felipe loved best. Stooping, she laid it on the bed, near Felipe's head. "He will like to see it when he wakes," she said.

The Seņora seized it, and flung it far out in the room. "Take it away! Flowers are poison when one is ill," she said coldly. "Have I never told you that?"

"No, Seņora," replied Ramona, meekly; and she glanced involuntarily at the saucer of musk which the Seņora kept on the table close to Felipe's pillow.

"The musk is different," said the Seņora, seeing the glance. "Musk is a medicine; it revives."

Ramona knew, but she would have never dared to say, that Felipe hated musk. Many times he had said to her how he hated the odor; but his mother was so fond of it, that it must always be that the veranda and the house would be full of it. Ramona hated it too. At times it made her faint, with a deadly faintness. But neither she nor Felipe would have confessed as much to the Seņora; and if they had, she would have thought it all a fancy.

"Shall I stay?" asked Ramona, gently.

"As you please," replied the Seņora. The simple presence of Ramona irked her now with a feeling she did not pretend to analyze, and would have been terrified at if she had. She would not have dared to say to herself, in plain words: "Why is that girl well and strong, and my Felipe lying here like to die! If Felipe dies, I cannot bear the sight of her. What is she, to be preserved of the saints!"

But that, or something like it, was what she felt whenever Ramona entered the room; still more, whenever she assisted in ministering to Felipe. If it had been possible, the Seņora would have had no hands but her own do aught for her boy. Even tears from Ramona sometimes irritated her. "What does she know about loving Felipe! He is nothing to her!" thought the Seņora, strangely mistaken, strangely blind, strangely forgetting how feeble is the tie of blood in the veins by the side of love in the heart.

If into this fiery soul of the Seņora's could have been dropped one second's knowledge of the relative positions she and Ramona already occupied in Felipe's heart, she would, on the spot, have either died herself or have slain Ramona, one or the other. But no such knowledge was possible; no such idea could have found entrance into the Seņora's mind. A revelation from Heaven of it could hardly have reached even her ears. So impenetrable are the veils which, fortunately for us all, are forever held by viewless hands between us and the nearest and closest of our daily companions.

At twilight of this day Felipe was restless and feverish again. He had dozed at intervals all day long, but had had no refreshing sleep.

"Send for Alessandro," he said. "Let him come and sing to me."

"He has his violin now; he can play, if you would like that better," said Ramona; and she related what Alessandro had told her of the messenger's having ridden to Temecula and back in a night and half a day, to bring it.

"I wanted to pay the man," she said; "I knew of course your mother would wish to reward him. But I fancy Alessandro was offended. He answered me shortly that it was paid, and it was nothing."

"You couldn't have offended him more," said Felipe. "What a pity! He is as proud as Lucifer himself, that Alessandro. You know his father has always been the head of their band; in fact, he has authority over several bands; General, they call it now, since they got the title from the Americans; they used to call it Chief., and until Father Peyri left San Luis Rey, Pablo was in charge of all the sheep, and general steward and paymaster. Father Peyri trusted him with everything; I've heard he would leave boxes full of uncounted gold in Pablo's charge to pay off the Indians. Pablo reads and writes, and is very well off; he has as many sheep as we have, I fancy!"

"What!" exclaimed Ramona, astonished. "They all look as if they were poor."

"Oh, well, so they are," replied Felipe, "compared with us; but one reason is, they share everything with each other. Old Pablo feeds and supports half his village, they say. So long as he has anything, he will never see one of his Indians hungry."

"How generous!" warmly exclaimed Ramona; "I think they are better than we are, Felipe!"

"I think so, too," said Felipe. "That's what I have always said. The Indians are the most generous people in the world. Of course they have learned it partly from us; but they were very much so when the Fathers first came here. You ask Father Salvierderra some day. He has read all Father Junipero's and Father Crespi's diaries, and he says it is wonderful how the wild savages gave food to every one who came."

"Felipe. you are talking too much," said the Seņora's voice, in the doorway; and as she spoke she looked reproachfully at Ramona. If she had said in words, "See how unfit you are to be trusted with Felipe. No wonder I do not leave the room except when I must!" her meaning could not have been plainer. Ramona felt it keenly, and not without some misgiving that it was deserved.

"Oh, dear Felipe, has it hurt you?" she said timidly; and to the Seņora, "Indeed, Seņora, he has been speaking but a very few moments, very low."

"Go call Alessandro, Ramona, will you?" said Felipe. "Tell him to bring his violin. I think I will go to sleep if he plays."

A long search Ramona had for Alessandro. Everybody had seen him a few minutes ago, but nobody knew where he was now. Kitchens, sheepfolds, vineyards, orchards, Juan Can's bedchamber,--Ramona searched them all in vain. At last, standing at the foot of the veranda steps, and looking down the garden, she thought she saw figures moving under the willows by the washing-stones.

"Can he be there?" she said. "What can he be doing there? Who is it with him?" And she walked down the path, calling, "Alessandro! Alessandro!"

At the first sound, Alessandro sprang from the side of his companion, and almost before the second syllables had been said, was standing face to face with Ramona.

"Here I am, Seņorita. Does Seņor Felipe want me? I have my violin here. I thought perhaps he would like to have me play to him in the twilight."

"Yes," replied Ramona, "he wishes to hear you. I have been looking everywhere for you." As she spoke, she was half unconsciously peering beyond into the dusk, to see whose figure it was, slowly moving by the brook.

Nothing escaped Alessandro's notice where Ramona was concerned. "It is Margarita," he said instantly. "Does the Seņorita want her? Shall I run and call her?"

"No," said Ramona, again displeased, she knew not why, nor in fact knew she was displeased; "no, I was not looking for her. What is she doing there?"

"She is washing," replied Alessandro, innocently.

"Washing at this time of day!" thought Ramona, severely. "A mere pretext. I shall watch Margarita. The Seņora would never allow this sort of thing." And as she walked back to the house by Alessandro's side, she meditated whether or no she would herself speak to Margarita on the subject in the morning.

Margarita, in the mean time, was also having her season of reflections not the pleasantest. As she soused her aprons up and down in the water, she said to herself, "I may as well finish them now I am here. How provoking! I've no more than got a word with him, than she must come, calling him away. And he flies as if he was shot on an arrow, at the first word. I'd like to know what's come over the man, to be so different. If I could ever get a good half-hour with him alone, I'd soon find out. Oh, but his eyes go through me, through and through me! I know he's an Indian, but what do I care for that. He's a million times handsomer than Seņor Felipe. And Juan José said the other day he'd make enough better head shepherd than old Juan Can, if Seņor Felipe'd only see it; and why shouldn't he get to see it, if Alessandro's here all summer?" And before the aprons were done, Margarita had a fine air-castle up: herself and Alessandro married, a nice little house, children playing in the sunshine below the artichoke-patch, she herself still working for the Seņora. "And the Seņorita will perhaps marry Seņor Felipe," she added, her thoughts moving more hesitatingly. "He worships the ground she walks on. Anybody with quarter of a blind eye can see that; but maybe the Seņora would not let him. Anyhow, Seņor Felipe is sure to have a wife, and so and so." It was an innocent, girlish castle, built of sweet and natural longings, for which no maiden, high or low, need blush; but its foundations were laid in sand, on which would presently beat such winds and floods as poor little Margarita never dreamed of.

The next day Margarita and Ramona both went about their day's business with a secret purpose in their hearts. Margarita had made up her mind that before night she would, by fair means or foul, have a good long talk with Alessandro. "He was fond enough of me last year, I know," she said to herself, recalling some of the dances and the good-night leave-takings at that time. "It's because he is so put upon by everybody now. What with Juan Can in one bed sending for him to prate to him about the sheep, and Seņor Felipe in another sending for him to fiddle him to sleep, and all the care of the sheep, it's a wonder he's not out of his mind altogether. But I'll find a chance, or make one, before this day's sun sets. If I can once get a half-hour with him, I'm not afraid after that; I know the way it is with men!" said the confident Margarita, who, truth being told, it must be admitted, did indeed know a great deal about the way it is with men, and could be safely backed, in a fair field, with a fair start, against any girl of her age and station in the country. So much for Margarita's purpose, at the outset of a day destined to be an eventful one in her life.

Ramona's purpose was no less clear. She had decided, after some reflection, that she would not speak to the Seņora about Margarita's having been under the willows with Alessandro in the previous evening, but would watch her carefully and see whether there were any farther signs of her attempting to have clandestine interviews with him.

This course she adopted, she thought, chiefly because of her affection for Margarita, and her unwillingness to expose her to the Seņora's displeasure, which would be great, and terrible to bear. She was also aware of an unwillingness to bring anything to light which would reflect ever so lightly upon Alessandro in the Seņora's estimation. "And he is not really to blame," thought Ramona, "if a girl follows him about and makes free with him. She must have seen him at the willows, and gone down there on purpose to meet him, making a pretext of the washing. For she never in this world would have gone to wash in the dark, as he must have known, if he were not a fool. He is not the sort of person, it seems to me, to be fooling with maids. He seems as full of grave thought as Father Salvierderra. If I see anything amiss in Margarita to-day, I shall speak to her myself, kindly but firmly, and tell her to conduct herself more discreetly."

Then, as the other maiden's had done, Ramona's thoughts, being concentrated on Alessandro, altered a little from their first key, and grew softer and more imaginative; strangely enough, taking some of the phrases, as it were, out of the other maiden's mouth.

"I never saw such eyes as Alessandro has," she said. "I wonder any girl should make free with him. Even I myself, when he fixes his eyes on me, feel a constraint. There is something in them like the eyes of a saint, so solemn, yet so mild. I am sure he is very good.

And so the day opened; and if there were abroad in the valley that day a demon of mischief, let loose to tangle the skeins of human affairs, things could not have fallen out better for his purpose than they did; for it was not yet ten o'clock of the morning, when Ramona, sitting at her embroidery in the veranda, half hid behind the vines, saw Alessandro going with his pruning-knife in his hand towards the artichoke-patch at the east of the garden, and joining the almond orchard. "I wonder what he is going to do there," she thought. "He can't be going to cut willows;" and her eyes followed him till he disappeared among the trees.

Ramona was not the only one who saw this. Margarita, looking from the east window of Father Salvierderra's room, saw the same thing. "Now's my chance!" she said; and throwing a white reboso coquettishly over her head, she slipped around the corner of the house. She ran swiftly in the direction in which Alessandro had gone. The sound of her steps reached Ramona, who, lifting her eyes, took in the whole situation at a glance. There was no possible duty, no possible message, which would take Margarita there. Ramona's cheeks blazed with a disproportionate indignation. But she bethought herself, "Ah, the Seņora may have sent her to call Alessandro!" She rose, went to the door of Felipe's room, and looked in. The Seņora was sitting in the chair by Felipe's bed, with her eyes closed. Felipe was dozing. The Seņora opened her eyes, and looked inquiringly at Ramona.

"Do you know where Margarita is?" said Ramona.

"In Father Salvierderra's room, or else in the kitchen helping Marda," replied the Seņora, in a whisper. "I told her to help Marda with the peppers this morning."

Ramona nodded, returned to the veranda, and sat down to decide on her course of action. Then she rose again, and going to Father Salvierderra's room, looked in. The room was still in disorder. Margarita had left her work there unfinished. The color deepened on Ramona's cheeks. It was strange how accurately she divined each process of the incident. "She saw him from this window," said Ramona, "and has run after him. It is shameful. I will go and call her back, and let her see that I saw it all. It is high time that this was stopped."

But once back in the veranda, Ramona halted, and seated herself in her chair again. The idea of seeming to spy was revolting to her.

"I will wait here till she comes back," she said, and took up her embroidery. But she could not work. As the minutes went slowly by, she sat with her eyes fixed on the almond orchard, where first Alessandro and then Margarita had disappeared. At last she could bear it no longer. It seemed to her already a very long time. It was not in reality very long,--a half hour or so, perhaps; but it was long enough for Margarita to have made great headway, as she thought, in her talk with Alessandro, and for things to have reached just the worst possible crisis at which they could have been surprised, when Ramona suddenly appeared at the orchard gate, saying in a stern tone, "Margarita, you are wanted in the house!" At a bad crisis, indeed, for everybody concerned. The picture which Ramona had seen, as she reached the gate, was this: Alessandro, standing with his back against the fence, his right hand hanging listlessly down, with the pruning-knife in it, his left hand in the hand of Margarita, who stood close to him, looking up in his face, with a half-saucy, half-loving expression. What made bad matters worse, was, that at the first sight of Ramona, Alessandro snatched his hand from Margarita's, and tried to draw farther off from her, looking at her with an expression which, even in her anger, Ramona could not help seeing was one of disgust and repulsion. And if Ramona saw it, how much more did Margarita! Saw it, as only a woman repulsed in presence of another woman can see and feel. The whole thing was over in the twinkling of an eye; the telling it takes double, treble the time of the happening. Before Alessandro was fairly aware what had befallen, Ramona and Margarita were disappearing from view under the garden trellis,--Ramona walking in advance, stately, silent, and Margarita following, sulky, abject in her gait, but with a raging whirlwind in her heart.

It had taken only the twinkling of an eye, but it had told Margarita the truth. Alessandro too.

"My God." he said, "the Seņorita thought me making love to that girl. May the fiends get her!The Seņorita looked at me as if I were a dog. How could she think a man would look at a woman after he had once seen her! And I can never, never speak to her to tell her! Oh, this cannot be borne!" And in his rage Alessandro threw his pruning-knife whirling through the air so fiercely, it sank to the hilt in one of the old olive-trees. He wished he were dead. He was minded to flee the place. How could he ever look the Seņorita in the face again!

"Perdition take that girl!" he said over and over in his helpless despair. An ill outlook for Margarita after this; and the girl had not deserved it.

In Margarita's heart the pain was more clearly defined. She had seen Ramona a half-second before Alessandro had; and dreaming no special harm, except a little confusion at being seen thus standing with him,--for she would tell the Seņorita all about it when matters had gone a little farther,--had not let go of Alessandro's hand. But the next second she had seen in his face a look; oh, she would never forget it, never! That she should live to have had any man look at her like that! At the first glimpse of the Seņorita, all the blood in his body seemed rushing into his face, and he had snatched his hand away,--for it was Margarita herself that had taken his hand, not he hers,--had snatched his hand away, and pushed her from him, till she had nearly fallen. All this might have been borne, if it had been only a fear of the Seņorita's seeing them, which had made him do it. But Margarita knew a great deal better than that. That one swift, anguished, shame-smitten, appealing, worshipping look on Alessandro's face, as his eyes rested on Ramona, was like a flash of light into Margarita's consciousness. Far better than Alessandro himself, she now knew his secret. In her first rage she did not realize either the gulf between herself and Ramona, or that between Ramona and Alessandro. Her jealous rage was as entire as if they had all been equals together. She lost her head altogether, and there was embodied insolence in the tone in which she said presently, "Did the Seņorita want me?"

Turning swiftly on her, and looking her full in the eye, Ramona said: "I saw you go to the orchard, Margarita, and I knew what you went for. I knew that you were at the brook last night with Alessandro. All I wanted of you was, to tell you that if I see anything more of this sort, I shall speak to the Seņora."

"There is no harm," muttered Margarita, sullenly. "I don't know what the Seņorita means."

"You know very well, Margarita," retorted Ramona. "You know that the Seņora permits nothing of the kind. Be careful, now, what you do." And with that the two separated, Ramona returning to the veranda and her embroidery, and Margarita to her neglected duty of making the good Father's bed. But each girl's heart was hot and unhappy; and Margarita's would have been still hotter and unhappier, had she heard the words which were being spoken on the veranda a little later.

After a few minutes of his blind rage at Margarita, himself, and fate generally, Alessandro, recovering his senses, had ingeniously persuaded himself that, as the Seņora's; and also the Seņorita's servant, for the time being, he owed it to them to explain the situation in which he had just been found. Just what he was to say he did not know; but no sooner had the thought struck him, than he set off at full speed for the house, hoping to find Ramona on the veranda, where he knew she spent all her time when not with Seņor Felipe.

When Ramona saw him coming, she lowered her eyes, and was absorbed in her embroidery. She did not wish to look at him.

The footsteps stopped. She knew he was standing at the steps. She would not look up. She thought if she did not, he would go away. She did not know either the Indian or the lover nature. After a time, finding the consciousness of the soundless presence intolerable, she looked up, and surprised on Alessandro's face a gaze which had, in its long interval of freedom from observation, been slowly gathering up into it all the passion of the man's soul, as a burning-glass draws the fire of the sun's rays. Involuntarily a low cry burst from Ramona's lips, and she sprang to her feet.

"Ah! did I frighten the Seņorita? Forgive. I have been waiting here a long time to speak to her. I wished to say--"

Suddenly Alessandro discovered that he did not know what he wished to say.

As suddenly, Ramona discovered that she knew all he wished to say. But she spoke not, only looked at him searchingly.

"Seņorita," he began again, "I would never be unfaithful to my duty to the Seņora, and to you."

"I believe you, Alessandro," said Ramona. "It is not necessary to say more."

At these words a radiant joy spread over Alessandro's face. He had not hoped for this. He felt, rather than heard, that Ramona understood him. He felt, for the first time, a personal relation between himself and her.

"It is well," he said, in the brief phrase so frequent with his people. "It is well." And with a reverent inclination of his head, he walked away. Margarita, still dawdling surlily over her work in Father Salvierderra's room, heard Alessandro's voice, and running to discover to whom he was speaking, caught these last, words. Peering from behind a curtain, she saw the look with which he said them; saw also the expression on Ramona's face as she listened.

Margarita clenched her hands. The seed had blossomed. Ramona had an enemy.

"Oh, but I am glad Father Salvierderra has gone!" said the girl, bitterly. "He'd have had this out of me, spite of everything. I haven't got to confess for a year, maybe; and much can happen in that time."

Much, indeed!

VIII

FELIPE gained but slowly. The relapse was indeed, as Father Salvierderra had said, worse than the original attack. Day after day he lay with little apparent change; no pain, but a weakness so great that it was almost harder to bear than sharp suffering would have been. Nearly every day Alessandro was sent for to play or sing to him. It seemed to be the only thing that roused him from his half lethargic state. Sometimes he would talk with Alessandro on matters relative to the estate, and show for a few moments something like his old animation; but he was soon tired, and would close his eyes, saying: "I will speak with you again about this, Alessandro; I am going to sleep now. Sing."

The Seņora, seeing Felipe's enjoyment of Alessandro's presence, soon came to have a warm feeling towards him herself; moreover, she greatly liked his quiet reticence. There was hardly a surer road to the Seņora's favor, for man or woman, than to be chary of speech and reserved in demeanor. She had an instinct of kinship to all that was silent, self-contained, mysterious, in human nature. The more she observed Alessandro, the more she trusted and approved him. Luckily for Juan Can, he did not know how matters were working in his mistress's mind. If he had, he would have been in a fever of apprehension, and would have got at swords' points with Alessandro immediately. On the contrary, all unaware of the real situation of affairs, and never quite sure that the Mexican he dreaded might not any day hear of his misfortune, and appear, asking for the place, he took every opportunity to praise Alessandro to the Seņora. She never visited his bedside that he had not something to say in favor of the lad, as he called him.

"Truly, Seņora," he said again and again, "I do marvel where the lad got so much knowledge, at his age. He is like an old hand at the sheep business. He knows more than any shepherd I have,--a deal more; and it is not only of sheep. He has had experience, too, in the handling of cattle. Juan José has been beholden to him more than once, already, for a remedy of which he knew not. And such modesty, withal. I knew not that there were such Indians; surely there cannot be many such."

"No, I fancy not," the Seņora would reply, absently. "His father is a man of intelligence, and has trained his son well."

"There is nothing he is not ready to do," continued Alessandro's eulogist. "He is as handy with tools as if he had been 'prenticed to a carpenter. He has made me a new splint for my leg, which was a relief like salve to a wound, so much easier was it than before. He is a good lad,--a good lad."

None of these sayings of Juan's were thrown away on the Seņora. More and more closely she watched Alessandro; and the very thing which Juan had feared, and which he had thought to avert by having Alessandro his temporary substitute, was slowly coming to pass. The idea was working in the Seņora's mind, that she might do a worse thing than engage this young, strong, active, willing man to remain permanently in her employ. The possibility of an Indian's being so born and placed that he would hesitate about becoming permanently a servant even to the Seņora Moreno, did not occur to her. However, she would do nothing hastily. There would be plenty of time before Juan Can's leg was well. She would study the young man more. In the mean time, she would cause Felipe to think of the idea, and propose it.

So one day she said to Felipe: "What a voice that Alessandro has, Felipe. We shall miss his music sorely when he goes, shall we not?"

"He's not going!" exclaimed Felipe, startled.

"Oh, no, no; not at present. He agreed to stay till Juan Can was about again; but that will be not more than six weeks now, or eight, I suppose. You forget how time has flown while you have been lying here ill, my son."

"True, true!" said Felipe. "Is it really a month already?" and he sighed.

"Juan Can tells me that the lad has a marvellous knowledge for one of his years," continued the Seņora. "He says he is as skilled with cattle as with sheep; knows more than any shepherd we have on the place. He seems wonderfully quiet and well-mannered. I never saw an Indian who had such behavior."

"Old Pablo is just like him," said Felipe. "It was natural enough, living so long with Father Peyri. And I've seen other Indians, too, with a good deal the same manner as Alessandro. It's born in them."

"I can't bear the idea of Alessandro's going away. But by that time you will be well and strong," said the Seņora; "you would not miss him then, would you?"

"Yes, I would, too!" said Felipe, pettishly. He was still weak enough to be childish. "I like him about me. He's worth a dozen times as much as any man we've got. But I don't suppose money could hire him to stay on any ranch."

"Were you thinking of hiring him permanently?" asked the Seņora, in a surprised tone. "I don't doubt you could do so if you wished. They are all poor, I suppose; he would not work with the shearers if he were not poor."

"Oh, it isn't that," said Felipe, impatiently. "You can't understand, because you've never been among them. But they are just as proud as we are. Some of them, I mean; such men as old Pablo. They shear sheep for money just as I sell wool for money. There isn't so much difference. Alessandro's men in the band obey him, and all the men in the village obey Pablo, just as implicitly as my men here obey me. Faith, much more so!" added Felipe, laughing. "You can't understand it, mother, but it's so. I am not at all sure I could offer Alessandro Assis money enough to tempt him to stay here as my servant."

The Seņora's nostrils dilated in scorn. "No, I do not understand it," she said. "Most certainly I do not understand it. Of what is it that these noble lords of villages are so proud? their ancestors,--naked savages less than a hundred years ago? Naked savages they themselves too, to-day, if we had not come here to teach and civilize them. The race was never meant for anything but servants. That was all the Fathers ever expected to make of them,--good, faithful Catholics, and contented laborers in the fields. Of course there are always exceptional instances, and I think, myself, Alessandro is one. I don't believe, however, he is so exceptional, but that if you were to offer him, for instance, the same wages you pay Juan Can, he would jump at the chance of staying on the place."

"Well, I shall think about it," said Felipe. "I'd like nothing better than to have him here always. He's a fellow I heartily like. I'll think about it."

Which was all the Seņora wanted done at present.

Ramona had chanced to come in as this conversation was going on. Hearing Alessandro's name she seated herself at the window, looking out, but listening intently. The month had done much for Alessandro with Ramona, though neither Alessandro nor Ramona knew it. It had done this much,--that Ramona knew always when Alessandro was near, that she trusted him, and that she had ceased to think of him as an Indian any more than when she thought of Felipe, she thought of him as a Mexican. Moreover, seeing the two men frequently together, she had admitted to herself, as Margarita had done before her, that Alessandro was far the handsomer man of the two. This Ramona did not like to admit, but she could not help it.

"I wish Felipe were as tall and strong as Alessandro," she said to herself many a time. "I do not see why he could not have been. I wonder if the Seņora sees how much handsomer Alessandro is."

When Felipe said that he did not believe he could offer Alessandro Assis money enough to tempt him to stay on the place, Ramona opened her lips suddenly, as if to speak, then changed her mind, and remained silent. She had sometimes displeased the Seņora by taking part in conversations between her and her son.

Felipe saw the motion, but he also thought it wiser to wait till after his mother had left the room, before he asked Ramona what she was on the point of saying. As soon as the Seņora went out, he said, "What was it, Ramona, you were going to say just now?"

Ramona colored. She had decided not to say it,

"Tell me, Ramona," persisted Felipe. "You were going to say something about Alessandro's staying; I know you were."

Ramona did not answer. For the first time in her life she found herself embarrassed before Felipe.

"Don't you like Alessandro?" said Felipe.

"Oh, yes!" replied Ramona, with instant eagerness. "It was not that at all. I like him very much;" But then she stopped.

"Well, what is it, then? Have you heard anything on the place about his staying?"

"Oh, no, no; not a word!" said Ramona. "Everybody understands that he is here only till Juan Can gets well. But you said you did not believe you could offer him money enough to tempt him to stay."

"Well," said Felipe, inquiringly, "I do not. Do you?"

"I think he would like to stay," said Ramona, hesitatingly. "That was what I was going to say."

"What makes you think so?" asked Felipe.

"I don't know," Ramona said, still more hesitatingly. Now that she had said it, she was sorry. Felipe looked curiously at her. Hesitancy like this, doubts, uncertainty as to her impressions, were not characteristic of Ramona. A flitting something which was far from being suspicion or jealousy, and yet was of kin to them both, went through Felipe's mind,--went through so swiftly that he was scarce conscious of it; if he had been, he would have scorned himself. Jealous of an Indian sheep-shearers Impossible! Nevertheless, the flitting something left a trace, and prevented Felipe from forgetting the trivial incident; and after this, it was certain that Felipe would observe Ramona more closely than he had done; would weigh her words and actions; and if she should seem by a shade altered in either, would watch still more closely. Meshes were closing around Ramona. Three watchers of her every look and act,--Alessandro in pure love, Margarita in jealous hate, Felipe in love and perplexity. Only the Seņora observed her not. If she had, matters might have turned out very differently, for the Seņora was clear-sighted, rarely mistaken in her reading of people's motives, never long deceived; but her observing and discriminating powers were not in focus, so far as Ramona was concerned. The girl was curiously outside of the Seņora's real life. Shelter, food, clothes, all external needs, in so far as her means allowed, the Seņora would, without fail, provide for the child her sister had left in her hands as a trust; but a personal relation with her, a mother's affection, or even interest and acquaintance, no. The Seņora had not that to give. And if she had it not, was she to blame? What could she do? Years ago Father Salvierderra had left off remonstrating with her on this point. "Is there more I should do for the child? Do you see aught lacking, aught amiss?" the Seņora would ask, conscientiously, but with pride. And the Father, thus inquired of, could not point out a duty which had been neglected.

"You do not love her, my daughter," he said.

"No." Seņora Moreno's truthfulness was of the adamantine order. "No, I do not. I cannot. One cannot love by act of will."

"That is true," the Father would say sadly; "but affection may be cultivated."

"Yes, if it exists," was the Seņora's constant answer. "But in this case it does not exist. I shall never love Ramona. Only at your command, and to save my sister a sorrow, I took her. I will never fail in my duty to her."

It was of no use. As well say to the mountain, "Be cast into the sea," as try to turn the Seņora's heart in any direction whither it did not of itself tend. All that Father Salvierderra could do, was to love Ramona the more himself, which he did heartily, and more and more each year, and small marvel at it; for a gentler, sweeter maiden never drew breath than this same Ramona, who had been all these years, save for Felipe, lonely in the Seņora Moreno's house.

Three watchers of Ramona now. If there had been a fourth, and that fourth herself, matters might have turned out differently. But how should Ramona watch? How should Ramona know? Except for her two years at school with the nuns, she had never been away from the Seņora's house. Felipe was the only young man she had known,--Felipe, her brother since she was five years old.

There were no gayeties in the Seņora Moreno's home. Felipe, when he needed them, went one day's journey, or two, or three, to get them; went as often as he liked. Ramona never went. How many times she had longed to go to Santa Barbara, or to Monterey, or Los Angeles; but to have asked the Seņora's permission to accompany her on some of her now infrequent journeys to these places would have required more courage than Ramona possessed. It was now three years since she left the convent school, but she was still as fresh from the hands of the nuns as on the day when, with loving tears, they had kissed her in farewell. The few romances and tales and bits of verse she had read were of the most innocent and old-fashioned kind, and left her hardly less childlike than before. This childlikeness, combined with her happy temperament, had kept her singularly contented in her monotonous life. She had fed the birds, taken care of the flowers, kept the chapel in order, helped in light household work, embroidered, sung, and, as the Seņora eight years before had bade her do, said her prayers and pleased Father Salvierderra.

By processes strangely unlike, she and Alessandro had both been kept strangely free from thoughts of love and of marriage,--he by living in the shadow, and she by living in the sun; his heart and thoughts filled with perplexities and fears, hers filled by a placid routine of light and easy tasks, and the outdoor pleasures of a child.

As the days went on, and Felipe still remained feeble, Alessandro meditated a bold stroke. Each time that he went to Felipe's room to sing or to play, he felt himself oppressed by the air. An hour of it made him uncomfortable. The room was large, and had two windows, and the door was never shut; yet the air seemed to Alessandro stifling.

"I should be as ill as the Seņor Felipe, if I had to stay in that room, and a bed is a weakening thing, enough to pull the strongest man down," said Alessandro to Juan Can one day. "Do you think I should anger them if I asked them to let me bring Seņor Felipe out to the veranda and put him on a bed of my making? I'd wager my head I'd put him on his feet in a week."

"And if you did that, you might ask the Seņora for the half of the estate, and get it, lad," replied Juan, Seeing the hot blood darkening in Alessandro's face at his words, he hastened to add, "Do not be so hot-blooded. I meant not that you would ask any reward for doing it; I was only thinking what joy it would be to the Seņora to see Seņor Felipe on his feet again. It has often crossed my thoughts that if he did not get up from this sickness the Seņora would not be long behind him. It is but for him that she lives. And who would have the estate in that case, I have never been able to find out."

"Would it not be the Seņorita?" asked Alessandro.

Juan Can laughed an ugly laugh. "Ha, ha! Let the Seņora hear you say that!" he said. "Faith, it will be little the Seņorita gets more than enough for her bread, may be, out of the Moreno estate. Hark ye, Alessandro; if you will not tell, I will tell you the story of the Seņorita. You know she is not of the Moreno blood; is no relation of theirs."

"Yes," said Alessandro; "Margarita has said to me that the Seņorita Ramona was only the foster-child of the Seņora Moreno."

"Foster-child!" repeated Juan Can, contemptuously, "there is something to the tale I know not, nor ever could find out; for when I was in Monterey the Ortegna house was shut, and I could not get speech of any of their people. But this much I know, that it was the Seņora Ortegna that had the girl first in keeping; and there was a scandalous tale about her birth."

If Juan Can's eyes had not been purblind with old age, he would have seen that in Alessandro's face which would have made him choose his words more carefully. But he went on: "It was after the Seņora Ortegna was buried, that our Seņora returned, bringing this child with her; and I do assure you, lad, I have seen the Seņora look at her many a time as if she wished her dead. And it is a shame, for she was always as fair and good a child as the saints ever saw. But a stain on the blood, a stain on the blood, lad, is a bitter thing in a house. This much I know, her mother was an Indian. Once when I was in the chapel, behind the big Saint Joseph there, I overheard the Seņora say as much. She was talking to Father Salvierderra, and she said, 'If the child had only the one blood in her veins, it would be different. I like not these crosses with Indians.'"

If Alessandro had been civilized, he would at this word "Indian" have bounded to his feet. Being Alessandro, he stood if possible stiller than before, and said in a low voice, "How know you it was the mother that was the Indian?"

Juan laughed again, maliciously: "Ha, it is the Ortegna face she has; and that Ortegna, why, he was the scandal byword of the whole coast. There was not a decent woman would have spoken to him, except for his wife's sake."

"But did you not say that it was in the Seņora Ortegna's keeping that the child was?" asked Alessandro, breathing harder and faster each moment now; stupid old Juan Can so absorbed in relish of his gossip, that he noticed nothing.

"Ay, ay. So I said," he went on; "and so it was. There be such saints, you know; though the Lord knows if she had been minded to give shelter to all her husband's bastards, she might have taken lease of a church to hold them. But there was a story about a man's coming with this infant and leaving it in the Seņora's room; and she, poor lady, never having had a child of her own, did warm to it at first sight, and kept it with her to the last; and I wager me, a hard time she had to get our Seņora to take the child when she died; except that it was to spite Ortegna, I think our Seņora would as soon the child had been dead."

"Has she not treated her kindly?" asked Alessandro, in a husky voice.

Juan Can's pride resented this question. "Do you suppose the Seņora Moreno would do an unkindness to one under her roof?" he asked loftily. "The Seņorita has been always, in all things, like Seņor Felipe himself. It was so that she promised the Seņora Ortegna, I have heard."

"Does the Seņorita know all this?" asked Alessandro.

Juan Can crossed himself. "Saints save us, no!" he exclaimed. "I'll not forget, to my longest day, what it cost me, once I spoke in her hearing, when she was yet small. I did not know she heard; but she went to the Seņora, asking who was her mother. And she said I had said her mother was no good, which in faith I did, and no wonder. And the Seņora came to me, and said she, 'Juan Canito, you have been a long time in our house; but if ever I hear of your mentioning aught concerning the Seņorita Ramona, on this estate or anywhere else in the country, that day you leave my service!'--And you'd not do me the ill-turn to speak of it, Alessandro, now?" said the old man, anxiously. "My tongue runs away with me, lying here on this cursed bed, with nothing to do,--an active man like me."

"No, I'll not speak of it, you may be assured," said Alessandro, walking away slowly.

"Here! Here!" called Juan. "What about that plan you had for making a bed for Seņor Felipe on the verandah Was it of raw-hide you meant?"

"Ah, I had forgotten," said Alessandro, returning. "Yes, that was it. There is great virtue in a raw-hide, tight stretched; my father says that it is the only bed the Fathers would ever sleep on, in the Mission days. I myself like the ground even better; but my father sleeps always on the rawhide. He says it keeps him well. Do you think I might speak of it to the Seņora?"

"Speak of it to Seņor Felipe himself," said Juan. "It will be as he says. He rules this place now, from beginning to end; and it is but yesterday I held him on my knee. It is soon that the old are pushed to the wall, Alessandro."

"Nay, Juan Canito," replied Alessandro, kindly. "It is not so. My father is many years older than you are, and he rules our people to-day as firmly as ever. I myself obey him, as if I were a lad still."

"What else, then, but a lad do you call yourself, I wonder?" thought Juan; but he answered, "It is not so with us. The old are not held in such reverence."

"That is not well," replied Alessandro. "We have been taught differently. There is an old man in our village who is many, many years older than my father. He helped to carry the mortar at the building of the San Diego Mission, I do not know how many years ago. He is long past a hundred years of age. He is blind and childish, and cannot walk; but he is cared for by every one. And we bring him in our arms to every council, and set him by my father's side. He talks very foolishly sometimes, but my father will not let him be interrupted. He says it brings bad luck to affront the aged. We will presently be aged ourselves."

"Ay, ay!" said Juan, sadly. "We must all come to it. It is beginning to look not so far off to me!"

Alessandro stared, no less astonished at Juan Can's unconscious revelation of his standard of measurement of years than Juan had been at his. "Faith, old man, what name dost give to yourself to-day!" he thought; but went on with the topic of the raw-hide bed. "I may not so soon get speech with Seņor Felipe," he said. "It is usually when he is sleepy that I go to play for him or to sing. But it makes my heart heavy to see him thus languishing day by day, and all for lack of the air and the sun, I do believe, indeed, Juan."

"Ask the Seņorita, then," said Juan. "She has his ear at all times."

Alessandro made no answer. Why was it that it did not please him,--this suggestion of speaking to Ramona of his plan for Felipe's welfare? He could not have told; but he did not wish to speak of it to her.

"I will speak to the Seņora," he said; and as luck would have it, at that moment the Seņora stood in the doorway, come to ask after Juan Can's health.

The suggestion of the raw-hide bed struck her favorably. She herself had, in her youth, heard much of their virtues, and slept on them. "Yes," she said, "they are good. We will try it. It was only yesterday that Seņor Felipe was complaining of the bed he lies on; and when he was well, he thought nothing could be so good; he brought it here, at a great price, for me, but I could not lie on it. It seemed as if it would throw me off as soon as I lay down; it is a cheating device, like all these innovations the Americans have brought into the country. But Seņor Felipe till now thought it a luxury; now he tosses on it, and says it is throwing him all the time."

Alessandro smiled, in spite of his reverence for the Seņora. "I once lay down on one myself, Seņora," he said, "and that was what I said to my father. It was like a wild horse under me, making himself ready to buck. I thought perhaps the invention was of the saints, that men should not sleep too long."

"There is a pile of raw-hides," said Juan, "well cured, but not too stiff; Juan José was to have sent them off to-day to be sold; one of those will be just right. It must not be too dry."

"The fresher the better," said Alessandro, "so it have no dampness. Shall I make the bed, Seņora?" he asked, "and will the Seņora permit that I make it on the veranda? I was just asking Juan Can if he thought I might be so bold as to ask you to let me bring Seņor Felipe into the outer air. With us, it is thought death to be shut up in walls, as he has been so long. Not till we are sure to die, do we go into the dark like that."

The Seņora hesitated. She did not share Alessandro's prejudice in favor of fresh air.

"Night and day both?" she said. "Surely it is not well to sleep out in the night?"

"That is the best of all, Seņora," replied Alessandro, earnestly. "I beg the Seņora to try it. If Seņor Felipe have not mended greatly after the first night he had so slept, then Alessandro will be a liar."

"No, only mistaken," said the Seņora, gently. She felt herself greatly drawn to this young man by his devotion, as she thought, of Felipe. "When I die and leave Felipe here," she had more than once said to herself, "it would be a great good to him to have such a servant as this on the place."

"Very well, Alessandro," she replied; "make the bed, and we will try it at once."

This was early in the forenoon. The sun was still high in the west, when Ramona, sitting as usual in the veranda, at her embroidery, saw Alessandro coming, followed by two men, bearing the raw-hide bed.

"What can that be?" she said. "Some new invention of Alessandro's, but for what?"

"A bed for the Seņor Felipe, Seņorita," said Alessandro, running lightly up the steps. "The Seņora has given permission to place it here on the veranda, and Seņor Felipe is to lie here day and night; and it will be a marvel in your eyes how he will gain strength. It is the close room which is keeping him weak now; he has no illness."

"I believe that is the truth, Alessandro," exclaimed Ramona; "I have been thinking the same thing. My head aches after I am in that room but an hour, and when I come here I am well. But the nights too, Alessandro? Is it not harmful to sleep out in the night air?"

"Why, Seņorita?" asked Alessandro, simply.

And Ramona had no answer, except, "I do not know; I have always heard so."

"My people do not think so," replied Alessandro; "unless it is cold, we like it better. It is good, Seņorita, to look up at the sky in the night."

"I should think it would be," cried Ramona. "I never thought of it. I should like to do it."

Alessandro was busy, with his face bent down, arranging the bedstead in a sheltered corner of the veranda. If his face had been lifted, Ramona would have seen a look on it that would have startled her more than the one she had surprised a few days previous, after the incident with Margarita. All day there had been coming and going in Alessandro's brain a confused procession of thoughts., vague yet intense. Put in words, they would have been found to be little more than ringing changes on this idea: "The Seņorita Ramona has Indian blood in her veins. The Seņorita Ramona is alone. The Seņora loves her not. Indian blood! Indian blood!" These, or something like them, would have been the words; but Alessandro did not put them in words. He only worked away on the rough posts for Seņor Felipe's bedstead, hammered, fitted, stretched the raw-hide and made it tight and firm, driving every nail, striking every blow, with a bounding sense of exultant strength, as if there were suddenly all around him a new heaven and a new earth.

Now, when he heard Ramona say suddenly in her girlish, eager tone, "It must be; I never thought of it; I should like to try it," these vague confused thoughts of the day, and the day's bounding sense of exultant strength, combined in a quick vision before Alessandro's eyes,--a vision of starry skies overhead, Ramona and himself together, looking up to them. But when he raised his head, all he. said was, "There, Seņorita! That is all firm, now. If Seņor Felipe will let me lay him an this bed, he will sleep as he has not slept since he fell ill."

Ramona ran eagerly into Felipe's room, "The bed is all ready on the veranda," she exclaimed. "Shall Alessandro come in and carry you out?"

Felipe looked up, startled. The Seņora turned on Ramona that expression of gentle, resigned displeasure, which always hurt the girl's sensitive nature far worse than anger. "I had not spoken to Felipe yet of the change, Ramona," she said. "I supposed that Alessandro would have informed me when the bed was ready; I am sorry you came in so suddenly. Felipe is still very weak, you see."

"What is it? What is it?" exclaimed Felipe, impatiently.

As soon as it was explained to him, he was like a child in his haste to be moved.

"That's just what I needed!" he exclaimed. "This cursed bed racks every bone in my body, and I have longed for the sun more than ever a thirsty man longed for water. Bless you, Alessandro," he went on, seeing Alessandro in the doorway. "Come here, and take me up in those long arms of yours, and carry me quick. Already I feel myself better."

Alessandro lifted him as if he were a baby; indeed, it was but a light burden now, Felipe's wasted body, for a man much less strong than Alessandro to lift.

Ramona, chilled and hurt, ran in advance, carrying pillows and blankets. As she began to arrange them on the couch, the Seņora took them from her hands, saying, "I will arrange them myself;" and waved Ramona away.

It was a little thing. Ramona was well used to such. Ordinarily it would have given her no pain she could not conceal. But the girl's nerves were not now in equilibrium. She had had hard work to keep back her tears at the first rebuff. This second was too much. She turned, and walked swiftly away, the tears rolling down her cheeks.

Alessandro saw it; Felipe saw it.

To Felipe the sight was, though painful, not a surprise. He knew but too well how often his mother hurt Ramona. All he thought now, in his weakness, was, "Alas! what a pity my mother does not love Ramona!"

To Alessandro the sight was the one drop too much in the cup. As he stooped to lay Felipe on the bed, he trembled so that Felipe looked up, half afraid.

"Am I still so heavy, Alessandro?" he said smiling.

"It is not your weight, Seņor Felipe," answered Alessandro, off guard, still trembling, his eyes following Ramona.

Felipe saw. In the next second, the eyes of the two young men met. Alessandro's fell before Felipe's. Felipe gazed on, steadily, at Alessandro.

"Ah!" he said; and as he said it, he closed his eyes, and let his head sink back into the pillow.

"Is that comfortable? Is that right?" asked the Seņora, who had seen nothing.

"The first comfortable moment I have had, mother," said Felipe. "Stay, Alessandro, I want to speak to you as soon as I am rested. This move has shaken me up a good deal. Wait."

"Yes, Seņor," replied Alessandro, and seated himself on the veranda steps.

"If you are to stay, Alessandro," said the Seņora, "I will go and look after some matters that need my attention. I feel always at ease about Seņor Felipe when you are with him. You will stay till I come back?"

"Yes, Seņora," said Alessandro, in a tone cold as the Seņora's own had been to Ramona. He was no longer in heart the Seņora Moreno's servant. In fact, he was at that very moment revolving confusedly in his mind whether there could be any possibility of his getting away before the expiration of the time for which he had agreed to stay.

It was a long time before Felipe opened his eyes. Alessandro thought he was asleep.

At last Felipe spoke. He had been watching Alessandro's face for some minutes. "Alessandro," he said.

Alessandro sprang to his feet, and walked swiftly to the bedside. He did not know what the next word might be. He felt that the Seņor Felipe had seen straight into his heart in that one moment's look, and Alessandro was preparing for anything.

"Alessandro," said Felipe, "my mother has been speaking to me about your remaining with us permanently. Juan Can is now very old, and after this accident will go on crutches the rest of his days, poor soul! We are in great need of some man who understands sheep, and the care of the place generally."

As he spoke, he watched Alessandro's face closely. Swift changing expressions passed over it. Surprise predominated. Felipe misunderstood the surprise. "I knew you would be surprised," he said. "I told my mother that you would not think of it; that you had stayed now only because we were in trouble."

Alessandro bowed his head gratefully. This recognition from Felipe gave him pleasure.

"Yes, Seņor," he said, "that was it. I told Father Salvierderra it was not for the wages. But my father and I have need of all the money we can earn. Our people are very poor, Seņor. I do not know whether my father would think I ought to take the place you offer me, or not, Seņor. It would be as he said. I will ask him."

"Then you would be willing to take it?" asked Felipe.

"Yes, Seņor, if my father wished me to take it," replied Alessandro, looking steadily and gravely at Felipe; adding, after a second's pause, "if you are sure that you desire it, Seņor Felipe, it would be a pleasure to me to be of help to you."

And yet it was only a few moments ago that Alessandro had been turning over in his mind the possibility of leaving the Seņora Moreno's service immediately. This change had not been a caprice, not been an impulse of passionate desire to remain near Ramona; it had come from a sudden consciousness that the Seņor Felipe would be his friend. And Alessandro was not mistaken.

IX

WHEN the Seņora came back to the veranda, she found Felipe asleep, Alessandro standing at the foot of the bed, with his arms crossed on his breast, watching him. As the Seņora drew near, Alessandro felt again the same sense of dawning hatred which had seized him at her harsh speech to Ramona. He lowered his eyes, and waited to be dismissed.

"You can go now, Alessandro," said the Seņora. "I will sit here. You are quite sure that it will be safe for Seņor Felipe to sleep here all night?"

"It will cure him before many nights," replied Alessandro, still without raising his eyes, and turning to go.

"Stay," said the Seņora. Alessandro paused. "It will not do for him to be alone here in the night, Alessandro.'

Alessandro had thought of this, and had remembered that if he lay on the veranda floor by Seņor Felipe's side, he would also lie under the Seņorita's window.

"No, Seņora," he replied. "I will lie here by his side. That was what I had thought, if the Seņora is willing."

"Thank you, Alessandro," said the Seņora, in a tone which would have surprised poor Ramona, still sitting alone in her room, with sad eyes. She did not know the Seņora could speak thus sweetly to any one but Felipe. "Thank you! You are kind. I will have a bed made for you."

"Oh, no." cried Alessandro; "if the Seņora will excuse me, I could not lie on a bed. A raw-hide like Seņor Felipe's, and my blanket, are all I want. I could not lie on any bed."

"To be sure," thought the Seņora; "what was I thinking of! How the boy makes one forget he is an Indian! But the floor is harder than the ground, Alessandro," she said kindly.

"No, Seņora," he said, "it is all one; and to-night I will not sleep. I will watch Seņor Felipe, in case there should be a wind, or he should wake and need something."

"I will watch him myself till midnight," said the Seņora. "I should feel easier to see how he sleeps at first."

It was the balmiest of summer nights, and as still as if no living thing were on the earth. There was a full moon, which shone on the garden, and on the white front of the little chapel among the trees. Ramona, from her window, saw Alessandro pacing up and down the walk. She had seen him spread down the raw-hide by Felipe's bed, and had seen the Seņora take her place in one of the big carved chairs. She wondered if they were both going to watch; she wondered why the Seņora would never let her sit up and watch with Felipe.

"I am not of any use to anybody," she thought sadly. She dared not go out and ask any questions about the arrangements for the night. At supper the Seņora had spoken to her only in the same cold and distant manner which always made her dumb and afraid. She had not once seen Felipe alone during the day. Margarita, who, in the former times,--ah, how far away those former times looked now!--had been a greater comfort to Ramona than she realized,--Margarita now was sulky and silent, never came into Ramona's presence if she could help it, and looked at her sometimes with an expression which made Ramona tremble, and say to herself, "She hates me; She has always hated me since that morning."

It had been a long, sad day to Ramona; and as she sat in her window leaning her head against the sash, and looked at Alessandro pacing up and down, she felt for the first time, and did not shrink from it nor in any wise disavow or disguise it to herself, that she was glad he loved her. More than this she did not think; beyond this she did not go. Her mind was not like Margarita's, full of fancies bred of freedom in intercourse with men. But distinctly, tenderly glad that Alessandro loved her, and distinctly, tenderly aware how well he loved her, she was, as she sat at her window this night, looking out into the moonlit garden; after she had gone to bed, she could still hear his slow, regular steps on the garden-walk, and the last thought she had, as she fell asleep, was that she was glad Alessandro loved her.

The moon had been long set, and the garden, chapel-front, trees, vines, were all wrapped in impenetrable darkness, when Ramona awoke, sat up in her bed, and listened. All was so still that the sound of Felipe's low, regular breathing came in through her open window. After hearkening to it for a few moments, she rose noiselessly from her bed, and creeping to the window parted the curtains and looked out; noiselessly, she thought; but it was not noiselessly enough to escape Alessandro's quick ear; without a sound, he sprang to his feet, and stood looking at Ramona's window.

"I am here, Seņorita," he whispered. "Do you want anything?"

"Has he slept all night like this?" she whispered back.

"Yes, Seņorita. He has not once moved."

"How good!" said Ramona. "How good!"

Then she stood still; she wanted to speak again to Alessandro, to hear him speak again, but she could think of no more to say. Because she could not, she gave a little sigh.

Alessandro took one swift step towards the window. "May the saints bless you, Seņorita," he whispered fervently.

"Thank you, Alessandro," murmured Ramona, and glided back to her bed, but not to sleep. It lacked not much of dawn; as the first faint light filtered through the darkness, Ramona heard the Seņora's window open.

"Surely she will not strike up the hymn and wake Felipe," thought Ramona; and she sprang again to the window to listen. A few low words between the Seņora and Alessandro, and then the Seņora's window closed again, and all was still.

"I thought she would not have the heart to wake him," said Ramona to herself. "The Virgin would have had no pleasure in our song, I am sure; but I will say a prayer to her instead;" and she sank on her knees at the head of her bed, and began saying a whispered prayer. The footfall of a spider in Ramona's room had not been light enough to escape the ear of that watching lover outside. Again Alessandro's tall figure arose from the floor, turning towards Ramona's window; and now the darkness was so far softened to dusk, that the outline of his form could be seen. Ramona felt it rather than saw it, and stopped praying. Alessandro was sure he had heard her voice.

"Did the Seņorita speak?" he whispered, his face close at the curtain. Ramona, startled, dropped her rosary, which rattled as it fell on the wooden floor.

"No, no, Alessandro," she said, "I did not speak." And she trembled, she knew not why. The sound of the beads on the floor explained to Alessandro what had been the whispered words he heard.

"She was at her prayers," he thought, ashamed and sorry. "Forgive me," he whispered, "I thought you called;" and he stepped back to the outer edge of the veranda, and seated himself on the railing. He would lie down no more. Ramona remained on her knees, gazing at the window. Through the transparent muslin curtain the dawning light came slowly, steadily, till at last she could see Alessandro distinctly. Forgetful of all else, she knelt gazing at him. The rosary lay on the floor, forgotten. Ramona would not finish that prayer, that day. But her heart was full of thanksgiving and gratitude, and the Madonna had a better prayer than any in the book.

The sun was up, and the canaries, finches, and linnets had made the veranda ring with joyous racket, before Felipe opened his eyes. The Seņora had come and gone and come again, looking at him anxiously, but he stirred not. Ramona had stolen timidly out, glancing at Alessandro only long enough to give him one quick smile, and bent over Felipe's bed, holding her breath, he lay so still.

"Ought he to sleep so long?" she whispered.

"Till the noon, it may be," answered Alessandro; "and when he wakes, you will see by his eye that he is another man."

It was indeed so. When Felipe first looked about him, he laughed outright with pure pleasure. Then catching sight of Alessandro at the steps, he called, in a stronger voice than had yet been heard from him, "Alessandro, you are a famous physician. Why couldn't that fool from Ventura have known as much? With all his learning, he had had me in the next world before many days, except for you. Now, Alessandro, breakfast! I'm hungry. I had forgotten what the thought of food was like to a hungry stomach. And plenty! plenty!" he called, as Alessandro ran toward the kitchen. "Bring all they have."

When the Seņora saw Felipe bolstered up in the bed, his eye bright, his color good, his voice clear, eating heartily like his old self, she stood like a statue in the middle of the veranda for a moment; then turning to Alessandro, she said chokingly, "May Heaven reward you!" and disappeared abruptly in her own room. When she came out, her eyes were red. All day she moved and spoke with a softness unwonted, indeed inconceivable. She even spoke kindly and without constraint to Ramona. She felt like one brought back from the dead.

After this, a new sort of life began for them all. Felipe's bed on the veranda was the rallying point for everything and everybody.. The servants came to look up at him, and wish him well, from the garden-walk below. Juan Can, when he first hobbled out on the stout crutches Alessandro had made him of manzanita wood, dragged himself all the way round the house, to have a look at Seņor Felipe and a word with him. The Seņora sat there, in the big carved chair, looking like a sibyl with her black silk banded head-dress severely straight across her brow, and her large dark eyes gazing out, past Felipe, into the far south sky. Ramona lived there too, with her embroidery or her book, sitting on cushions on the floor in a corner, or at the foot of Felipe's bed, always so placed, however,--if anybody had noticed, but nobody did,--so placed that she could look at Felipe without looking full at the Seņora's chair, even if the Seņora were not in it.

Here also came Alessandro many times a day,--sometimes sent for, sometimes of his own accord. He was freely welcome. When he played or sang he sat on the upper step of the stairs leading down to the garden. He also had a secret, which he thought all his own, in regard to the positions he chose. He sat always, when Ramona was there, in the spot which best commanded a view of her face. The secret was not all his own. Felipe knew it. Nothing was escaping Felipe in these days. A bomb-shell exploding at their feet would not have more astonished the different members of this circle, the Seņora, Ramona, Alessandro, than it would to have been made suddenly aware of the thoughts which were going on in Felipe's mind now, from day to day, as he lay there placidly looking at them all.

It is probable that if Felipe had been in full health and strength when the revelation suddenly came to him that Alessandro loved Ramona, and that Ramona might love Alessandro, he would have been instantly filled with jealous antagonism. But at the time when this revelation came, he was prostrate, feeble, thinking many times a day that he must soon die; it did not seem to Felipe that a man could be so weak as he was, and ever again be strong and well. Side by side with these forebodings of his own death, always came the thought of Ramona. What would become of her, if he were gone? Only too well he knew that the girl's heart would be broken; that she could not live on alone with his mother. Felipe adored his mother; but he understood her feeling about Ramona.

With his feebleness had also come to Felipe, as is often the case in long illnesses, a greater clearness of perception. Ramona had ceased to puzzle him. He no longer asked himself what her long, steady look into his eyes meant. He knew. He saw it mean that as a sister she loved him, had always loved him, and could love him in no other way. He wondered a little at himself that this gave him no more pain; only a sort of sweet, mournful tenderness towards her. It must be because he was so soon going out of the world, he thought. Presently he began to be aware that a new quality was coming into his love for her. He himself was returning to the brother love which he had had for her when they were children together, and in which he had felt no change until he became a man and Ramona a woman. It was strange what a peace fell upon Felipe when this was finally clear and settled in his mind. No doubt he had had more misgiving and fear about his mother in the matter than he had ever admitted to himself; perhaps also the consciousness of Ramona's unfortunate birth had rankled at times; but all this was past now. Ramona was his sister. He was her brother. What course should he pursue in the crisis which he saw drawing near? How could he best help Ramona? What would be best for both her and Alessandro? Long before the thought of any possible union between himself and Ramona had entered into Alessandro's mind, still longer before it had entered into Ramona's to think of Alessandro as a husband, Felipe had spent hours in forecasting, plotting, and planning for them. For the first time in his life he felt himself in the dark as to his mother's probable action. That any concern as to Ramona's personal happiness or welfare would influence her, he knew better than to think for a moment. So far as that was concerned, Ramona might wander out the next hour, wife of a homeless beggar, and his mother would feel no regret. But Ramona had been the adopted daughter of the Seņora Ortegna, bore the Ortegna name, and had lived as foster-child in the house of the Morenos. Would the Seņora permit such a one to marry an Indian?

Felipe doubted. The longer he thought, the more he doubted. The more he watched, the more he saw that the question might soon have to be decided. Any hour might precipitate it. He made plan after plan for forestalling trouble, for preparing his mother; but Felipe was by nature indolent, and now he was, in addition, feeble. Day after day slipped by. It was exceedingly pleasant on the veranda. Ramona was usually with him; his mother was gentler, less sad, than he had ever seen her. Alessandro was always at hand, ready for any service,--in the field, in the house,--his music a delight, his strength and fidelity a repose, his personal presence always agreeable. "If only my mother could think it," reflected Felipe, "it would be the best thing, all round, to have Alessandro stay here as overseer of the place, and then they might be married. Perhaps before the summer is over she will come to see it so."

And the delicious, languid, semi-tropic summer came hovering over the valley. The apricots turned golden, the peaches glowed, the grapes filled and hardened, like opaque emeralds hung thick under the canopied vines. The garden was a shade brown, and the roses had all fallen; but there were lilies, and orange-blossoms, and poppies, and carnations, and geraniums in the pots, and musk,--oh, yes, ever and always musk. It was like an enchanter's spell, the knack the Seņora had of forever keeping relays of musk to bloom all the year; and it was still more like an enchanter's spell, that Felipe would never confess that he hated it.' But the bees liked it, and the humming-birds,--the butterflies also; and the air was full of them. The veranda was a quieter place now as the season's noon grew near. The linnets were all nesting, and the finches and the canaries too; and the Seņora spent hours, every day, tirelessly feeding the mothers. The vines had all grown and spread out to their thickest; no need any longer of the gay blanket Alessandro had pinned up that first morning to keep the sun off Felipe's head.

What was the odds between a to-day and a to-morrow in such a spot as this? "To-morrow," said Felipe, "I will speak to my mother," and "to-morrow," and "to-morrow;" but he did not.

There was one close observer of these pleasant veranda days that Felipe knew nothing about. That was Margarita. As the girl came and went about her household tasks, she was always on the watch for Alessandro, on the watch for Ramona. She was biding her time. Just what shape her revenge was going to take, she did not know. It was no use plotting. It must be as it fell out; but that the hour and the way for her revenge would come she never doubted.

When she saw the group on the veranda, as she often did, all listening to Alessandro's violin, or to his singing, Alessandro himself now at his ease and free in the circle, as if he had been there always, her anger was almost beyond bounds.

"Oh, ho! like a member of the family; quite so!" she sneered. "It is new times when a head shepherd spends his time with the ladies of the house, and sits in their presence like a guest who is invited! We shall see; we shall see what comes of all this!" And she knew not which she hated the more of the two, Alessandro or Ramona.

Since the day of the scene at the artichoke-field she had never spoken to Alessandro, and had avoided, so far as was possible, seeing him. At first Alessandro was sorry for this, and tried to be friendly with her. As soon as he felt assured that the incident had not hurt him at all in the esteem of Ramona, he began to be sorry for Margarita. "A man should not be rude to any maiden," he thought; and he hated to remember how he had pushed Margarita from him, and snatched his hand away, when he had in the outset made no objection to her taking it. But Margarita's resentment was not to be appeased. She understood only too clearly how little Alessandro's gentle advances meant, and she would none of them. "Let him go to his Seņorita," she said bitterly, mocking the reverential tone in which she had overheard him pronounce the word. "She is fond enough of him, if only the fool had eyes to see it. She'll be ready to throw herself at his head before long, if this kind of thing keeps up. 'It is not well to speak thus freely of young men, Margarita!' Ha, ha! Little I thought that day which way the wind set in my mistress's temper! I'll wager she reproves me no more, under this roof or any other! Curse her! What did she want of Alessandro, except to turn his head, and then bid him go his way!"

To do Margarita justice, she never once dreamed of the possibility of Ramona's wedding Alessandro. A clandestine affair, an intrigue of more or less intensity, such as she herself might have carried on with any one of the shepherds,--this was the utmost stretch of Margarita's angry imaginations in regard to her young mistress's liking for Alessandro. There was not, in her way of looking at things, any impossibility of such a thing as that. But marriage! It might be questioned whether that idea would have been any more startling to the Seņora herself than to Margarita.

Little had passed between Alessandro and Ramona which Margarita did not know. The girl was always like a sprite,--here, there, everywhere, in an hour, and with eyes which, as her mother often told her, saw on all sides of her head. Now, fired by her new purpose, new passion, she moved swifter than ever, and saw and heard even more, There were few hours of any day when she did not know to a certainty where both Alessandro and Ramona were; and there had been few meetings between them which she had not either seen or surmised.

In the simple life of such a household as the Seņora's, it was not strange that this was possible; nevertheless, it argued and involved untiring vigilance on Margarita's part. Even Felipe, who thought himself, from his vantage-post of observation on the veranda, and from his familiar relation with Ramona, well informed of most that happened, would have been astonished to hear all that Margarita could have told him. In the first days Ramona herself had guilelessly told him much,--had told him how Alessandro, seeing her trying to sprinkle and bathe and keep alive the green ferns with which she had decorated the chapel for Father Salvierderra's coming, had said: "Oh, Seņorita, they are dead! Do not take trouble with them! I will bring you fresh ones;" and the next morning she had found, lying at the chapel door, a pile of such ferns as she had never before seen; tall ones, like ostrich-plumes, six and eight feet high; the feathery maidenhair, and the gold fern, and the silver, twice as large as she ever had found them. The chapel was beautiful, like a conservatory, after she had arranged them in vases and around the high candlesticks.

It was Alessandro, too, who had picked up in the artichoke-patch all of the last year's seed-vessels which had not been trampled down by the cattle, and bringing one to her, had asked shyly if she did not think it prettier than flowers made out of paper. His people, he said, made wreaths of them. And so they were, more beautiful than any paper flowers which ever were made,--great soft round disks of fine straight threads like silk, with a kind of saint's halo around them of sharp, stiff points, glossy as satin, and of a lovely creamy color. It was the strangest thing in the world nobody had ever noticed them as they lay there on the ground. She had put a great wreath of them around Saint Joseph's head, and a bunch in the Madonna's hand; and when the Seņora saw them, she exclaimed in admiration, and thought they must have been made of silk and satin.

And Alessandro had brought her beautiful baskets, made by the Indian women at Pala, and one which had come from the North, from the Tulare country; it had gay feathers woven in with the reeds,--red and yellow, in alternate rows, round and round. It was like a basket made out of a bright-colored bird.

And a beautiful stone bowl Alessandro had brought her, glossy black, that came all the way from Catalina Island; a friend of Alessandro's got it. For the first few weeks it had seemed as if hardly a day passed that there was not some new token to be chronicled of Alessandro's thoughtfulness and good-will. Often, too, Ramona had much to tell that Alessandro had said,--tales of the old Mission days that he had heard from his father; stories of saints, and of the early Fathers, who were more like saints than like men, Alessandro said,--Father Junipero, who founded the first Missions, and Father Crespi, his friend. Alessandro's grandfather had journeyed with Father Crespi as his servant, and many a miracle he had with his own eyes seen Father Crespi perform. There was a cup out of which the Father always took his chocolate for breakfast,--a beautiful cup, which was carried in a box, the only luxury the Father had; and one morning it was broken, and everybody was in terror and despair. "Never mind, never mind," said the Father; "I will make it whole;" and taking the two pieces in his hands, he held them tight together, and prayed over them, and they became one solid piece again, and it was used all through the journey, just as before.

But now, Ramona never spoke voluntarily of Alessandro. To Felipe's sometimes artfully put questions or allusions to him, she made brief replies, and never continued the topic; and Felipe had observed another thing: she now rarely looked at Alessandro. When he was speaking to others she kept her eyes on the ground. If he addressed her, she looked quickly up at him, but lowered her eyes after the first glance. Alessandro also observed this, and was glad of it. He understood it. He knew how differently she could look in his face in the rare moments when they were alone together. He fondly thought he alone knew this; but he was mistaken. Margarita knew. She had more than once seen it.

It had happened more than once that he had found Ramona at the willows by the brook, and had talked with her there. The first time it happened, it was a chance; after that never a chance again, for Alessandro went often seeking the spot, hoping to find her. In Ramona's mind too, not avowed, but half consciously, there was, if not the hope of seeing him there, at least the memory that it was there they had met. It was a pleasant spot,--cool and shady even at noon, and the running water always full of music. Ramona often knelt there of a morning, washing out a bit of lace or a handkerchief; and when Alessandro saw her, it went hard with him to stay away. At such moments the vision returned to him vividly of that first night when, for the first second, seeing her face in the sunset glow, he had thought her scarce mortal. It was not that he even now thought her less a saint; but ah, how well he knew her to be human! He had gone alone in the dark to this spot many a time, and, lying on the grass, put his hands into the running water, and played with it dreamily, thinking, in his poetic Indian fashion, thoughts like these: "Whither have gone the drops that passed beneath her hands, just here? These drops will never find those in the sea; but I love this water!"

Margarita had seen him thus lying, and without dreaming of the refined sentiment which prompted his action, had yet groped blindly towards it, thinking to herself: "He hopes his Seņorita will come down to him there. A nice place it is for a lady to meet her lover, at the washing-stones! It will take swifter water than any in that brook, Seņorita Ramona, to wash you white in the Seņora's eyes, if ever she come upon you there with the head shepherd, making free with him, may be! Oh, but if that could only happen, I'd die content!" And the more Margarita watched, the more she thought it not unlikely that it might turn out so. It was oftener at the willows than anywhere else that Ramona and Alessandro met; and, as Margarita noticed with malicious satisfaction, they talked each time longer, each time parted more lingeringly. Several times it had happened to be near supper-time; and Margarita, with one eye on the garden-walk, had hovered restlessly near the Seņora, hoping to be ordered to call the Seņorita to supper.

"If but I could come on them of a sudden, and say to her as she did to me, 'You are wanted in the house'! Oh, but it would do my soul good! I'd say it so it would sting like a lash laid on both their faces! It will come! It will come! It will be there that she'll be caught one of these fine times she's having! I'll wait! It will come!"

X

IT came. And when it came, it fell out worse for Ramona than Margarita's most malicious hopes had pictured; but Margarita had no hand in it. It was the Seņora herself.

Since Felipe had so far gained as to be able to be dressed, sit in his chair on the veranda, and walk about the house and garden a little, the Seņora, at ease in her mind about him, had resumed her old habit of long, lonely walks on the place. It had been well said by her servants, that there was not a blade of grass on the estate that the Seņora had not seen. She knew every inch of her land. She had a special purpose in walking over it now. She was carefully examining to see whether she could afford to sell to the Ortegas a piece of pasture-land which they greatly desired to buy, as it joined a pasturage tract of theirs. This bit of land lay farther from the house than the Seņora realized, and it had taken more time than she thought it would, to go over it; and it was already sunset on this eventful day, when, hurrying home, she turned off from the highway into the same shortcut path in which Father Salvierderra had met Ramona in the spring. There was no difficulty now in getting through the mustard tangle. It was parched and dry, and had been trampled by cattle. The Seņora walked rapidly, but it was dusky twilight when she reached the willows; so dusky that she saw nothing--and she stepped so lightly on the smooth brown path that she made no sound--until suddenly, face to face with a man and a woman standing locked in each other's arms, she halted, stepped back a pace, gave a cry of surprise, and, in the same second, recognized the faces of the two, who, stricken dumb, stood apart, each gazing into her face with terror.

Strangely enough, it was Ramona who spoke first. Terror for herself had stricken her dumb; terror for Alessandro gave her a voice.

"Seņora," she began,

"Silence! Shameful creature!" cried the Seņora. "Do not dare to speak! Go to your room!"

Ramona did not move.

"As for you," the Seņora continued, turning to Alessandro, "you,"--she was about to say, "You are discharged from my service from this hour," but recollecting herself in time, said,--"you will answer to Seņor Felipe. Out of my sight!" And the Seņora Moreno actually, for once in her life beside herself with rage, stamped her foot on the ground. "Out of my sight!" she repeated.

Alessandro did not stir, except to turn towards Ramona with an inquiring look. He would run no risk of doing what she did not wish. He had no idea what she would think it best to do in this terrible dilemma.

"Go, Alessandro," said Ramona, calmly, still looking the Seņora full in the eye. Alessandro obeyed; before the words had left her lips, he had walked away.

Ramona's composure, and Alessandro's waiting for further orders than her own before stirring from the spot, were too much for Seņora Moreno. A wrath, such as she had not felt since she was young, took possession of her. As Ramona opened her lips again, saying, "Seņora," the Seņora did a shameful deed; she struck the girl on the mouth, a cruel blow.

"Speak not to me!" she cried again; and seizing her by the arm, she pushed rather than dragged her up the garden-walk.

"Seņora, you hurt my arm," said Ramona, still in the same calm voice. "You need not hold me. I will go with you. I am not afraid."

Was this Ramona? The Seņora, already ashamed, let go the arm, and stared in the girl's face. Even in the twilight she could see upon it an expression of transcendent peace, and a resolve of which no one would have thought it capable. "What does this mean?" thought the Seņora, still weak, and trembling all over, from rage. "The hussy, the hypocrite!" and she seized the arm again.

This time Ramona did not remonstrate, but submitted to being led like a prisoner, pushed into her own room, the door slammed violently and locked on the outside.

All of which Margarita saw. She had known for an hour that Ramona and Alessandro were at the willows, and she had been consumed with impatience at the Seņora's prolonged absence. More than once she had gone to Felipe, and asked with assumed interest if he were not hungry, and if he and the Seņorita would not have their supper.

"No, no, not till the Seņora returns," Felipe had answered. He, too, happened this time to know where Ramona and Alessandro were. He knew also where the Seņora had gone, and that she would be late home; but he did not know that there would be any chance of her returning by way of the willows at the brook; if he had known it, he would have contrived to summon Ramona.

When Margarita saw Ramona shoved into her room by the pale and trembling Seņora, saw the key turned, taken out, and dropped into the Seņora's pocket, she threw her apron over her head, and ran into the back porch. Almost a remorse seized her. She remembered in a flash how often Ramona had helped her in times gone by,--sheltered her from the Seņora's displeasure. She recollected the torn altar-cloth. "Holy Virgin! what will be done to her now?" she exclaimed, under her breath. Margarita had never conceived of such an extremity as this. Disgrace, and a sharp reprimand, and a sundering of all relations with Alessandro,--this was all Margarita had meant to draw down on Ramona's head. But the Seņora looked as if she might kill her.

"She always did hate her, in her heart," reflected Margarita; "she shan't starve her to death, anyhow. I'll never stand by and see that. But it must have been something shameful the Seņora saw, to have brought her to such a pass as this;" and Margarita's jealousy again got the better of her sympathy. "Good enough for her. No more than she deserved. An honest fellow like Alessandro, that would make a good husband for any girl!" Margarita's short-lived remorse was over. She was an enemy again.

It was an odd thing, how identical were Margarita's and the Seņora's view and interpretation of the situation. The Seņora looking at it from above, and Margarita looking at it from below, each was sure, and they were both equally sure, that it could be nothing more nor less than a disgraceful intrigue. Mistress and maid were alike incapable either of conjecturing or of believing the truth.

As ill luck would have it,--or was it good luck?--Felipe also had witnessed the scene in the garden-walk. Hearing voices, he had looked out of his window, and, almost doubting the evidence of his senses, had seen his mother violently dragging Ramona by the arm,--Ramona pale, but strangely placid; his mother with rage and fury in her white face. The sight told its own tale to Felipe. Smiting his forehead with his hand, he groaned out: "Fool that I was, to let her be surprised; she has come on them unawares; now she will never, never forgive it!" And Felipe threw himself on his bed, to think what should be done. Presently he heard his mother's voice, still agitated, calling his name. He remained silent, sure she would soon seek him in his room. When she entered, and, seeing him on the bed, came swiftly towards him, saying, "Felipe, dear, are you ill?" he replied in a feeble voice, "No, mother, only tired a little to-night;" and as she bent over him, anxious, alarmed, he threw his arms around her neck and kissed her warmly. "Mother mia!" he said passionately, "what should I do without you?" The caress, the loving words, acted like oil on the troubled waters. They restored the Seņora as nothing else could. What mattered anything, so long as she had her adoring and adorable son! And she would not speak to him, now that he was so tired, of this disgraceful and vexing matter of Alessandro. It could wait till morning. She would send him his supper in his room, and he would not miss Ramona, perhaps.

"I will send your supper here, Felipe," she said;. "you must not overdo; you have been walking too much. Lie still." And kissing him affectionately, she went to the dining-room, where Margarita, vainly trying to look as if nothing had happened, was standing, ready to serve supper. When the Seņora entered, with her countenance composed, and in her ordinary tones said, "Margarita, you can take Seņor Felipe's supper into his room; he is lying down, and will not get up; he is tired," Margarita was ready to doubt if she had not been in a nightmare dream. Had she, or had she not, within the last half-hour, seen the Seņora, shaking and speechless with rage, push the Seņorita Ramona into her room, and lock her up there? She was so bewildered that she stood still and gazed at the Seņora, with her mouth wide open.

"What are you staring at, girl?" asked the Seņora, so sharply that Margarita jumped.

"Oh, nothing, nothing, Seņora! And the Seņorita, will she come to supper? Shall I call her?" she said.

The Seņora eyed her. Had she seen? Could she have seen? The Seņora Moreno was herself again. So long as Ramona was under her roof, no matter what she herself might do or say to the girl, no servant should treat her with disrespect, or know that aught was wrong.

"The Seņorita is not well," she said coldly. "She is in her room. I myself will take her some supper later, if she wishes it. Do not disturb her." And the Seņora returned to Felipe.

Margarita chuckled inwardly, and proceeded to clear the table she had spread with such malicious punctuality two short hours before. In those two short hours how much had happened!

"Small appetite for supper will our Seņorita have, I reckon," said the bitter Margarita, "and the Seņor Alessandro also! I'm curious to see how he will carry himself."

But her curiosity was not gratified. Alessandro came not to the kitchen. The last of the herdsmen had eaten and gone; it was past nine o'clock, and no Alessandro. Slyly Margarita ran out and searched in some of the places where she knew he was in the habit of going; but Alessandro was not to be found. Once she brushed so near his hiding-place that he thought he was discovered, and was on the point of speaking, but luckily held his peace, and she passed on. Alessandro was hid behind the geranium clump at the chapel door; sitting on the ground, with his knees drawn up to his chin, watching Ramona's window. He intended to stay there all night. He felt that he might be needed: if Ramona wanted him, she would either open her window and call, or would come out and go down through the garden-walk to the willows. In either case, he would see her from the hiding-place he had chosen. He was racked by his emotions; mad with joy one minute, sick at heart with misgiving the next. Ramona loved him. She had told him so. She had said she would go away with him and be his wife. The words had but just passed her lips, at that dreadful moment when the Seņora appeared in their presence. As he lived the scene over again, he re-experienced the joy and the terror equally.

What was not that terrible Seņora capable of doing? Why did she look at him and at Ramona with such loathing scorn? Since she knew that the Seņorita was half Indian, why should she think it so dreadful a thing for her to marry an Indian man? It did not once enter into Alessandro's mind, that the Seņora could have had any other thought, seeing them as she did, in each other's arms. And again what had he to give to Ramona? Could she live in a house such as he must live in,--live as the Temecula women lived? No! for her sake he must leave his people; must go to some town, must do--he knew not what--something to earn more money. Anguish seized him as he pictured to himself Ramona suffering deprivations. The more he thought of the future in this light, the more his joy faded and his fear grew. He had never had sufficient hope that she could be his, to look forward thus to the practical details of life; he had only gone on loving, and in a vague way dreaming and hoping; and now,--now, in a moment, all had been changed; in a moment he had spoken, and she had spoken, and such words once spoken, there was no going back; and he had put his arms around her, and felt her head on his shoulder, and kissed her! Yes, he, Alessandro, had kissed the Seņorita Ramona, and she had been glad of it, and had kissed him on the lips, as no maiden kisses a man unless she will wed with him,--him, Alessandro! Oh, no wonder the man's brain whirled, as he sat there in the silent darkness, wondering, afraid, helpless; his love wrenched from him, in the very instant of their first kiss,--wrenched from him, and he himself ordered, by one who had the right to order him, to begone! What could an Indian do against a Moreno!

Would Felipe help him? Ay, there was Felipe! That Felipe was his friend, Alessandro knew with a knowledge as sure as the wild partridge's instinct for the shelter of her brood; but could Felipe move the Seņora? Oh, that terrible Seņora! What would become of them?

As in the instant of drowning, men are said to review in a second the whole course of their lives, so in this supreme moment of Alessandro's love there flashed through his mind vivid pictures of every word and act of Ramona's since he first knew her. He recollected the tone in which she had said, and the surprise with which he heard her say it, at the time of Felipe's fall, "You are Alessandro, are you not?" He heard again her soft-whispered prayers the first night Felipe slept on the veranda. He recalled her tender distress because the shearers had had no dinner; the evident terribleness to her of a person going one whole day without food. "O God! will she always have food each day if she comes with me?" he said. And at the bare thought he was ready to flee away from her forever. Then he recalled her look and her words only a few hours ago, when he first told her he loved her; and his heart took courage. She had said, "I know you love me, Alessandro, and I am glad of it," and had lifted her eyes to his, with all the love that a woman's eyes can carry; and when he threw his arms around her, she had of her own accord come closer, and laid one hand on his shoulder, and turned her face to his. Ah, what else mattered! There was the whole world; if she loved him like this, nothing could make them wretched; his love would be enough for her,--and for him hers was an empire.

It was indeed true, though neither the Seņora nor Margarita would have believed it, that this had been the first word of love ever spoken between Alessandro and Ramona, the first caress ever given, the first moment of unreserve. It had come about, as lovers' first words, first caresses, are so apt to do, unexpectedly, with no more premonition, at the instant, than there is of the instant of the opening of a flower. Alessandro had been speaking to Ramona of the conversation Felipe had held with him in regard to remaining on the place, and asked her if she knew of the plan.

"Yes," she said; "I heard the Seņora talking about it with Felipe, some days ago."

"Was she against my staying?" asked Alessandro, quickly.

"I think not," said Ramona, "but I am not sure. It is not easy to be sure what the Seņora wishes, till afterward. It was Felipe that proposed it."

This somewhat enigmatical statement as to the difficulty of knowing the Seņora's wishes was like Greek to Alessandro's mind.

"I do not understand, Seņorita," he said. "What do you mean by 'afterward'?"

"I mean," replied Ramona, "that the Seņora never says she wishes anything; she says she leaves everything to Felipe to decide, or to Father Salvierderra. But I think it is always decided as she wishes to have it, after all. The Seņora is wonderful, Alessandro; don't you think so?"

"She loves Seņor Felipe very much," was Alessandro's evasive reply.

"Oh, yes," exclaimed Ramona. "You do not begin to know how much. She does not love any other human being. He takes it all. She hasn't any left. If he had died, she would have died too. That is the reason she likes you so much; she thinks you saved Felipe's life. I mean, that is one reason," added Ramona, smiling, and looking up confidingly at Alessandro, who smiled back, not in vanity, but honest gratitude that the Seņorita was pleased to intimate that he was not unworthy of the Seņora's regard.

"I do not think she likes me," he said. "I cannot tell why; but I do not think she likes any one in the world. She is not like any one I ever saw, Seņorita."

"No," replied Ramona, thoughtfully. "She is not. I am, oh, so afraid of her, Alessandro! I have always been, ever since I was a little girl. I used to think she hated me; but now I think she does not care one way or the other, if I keep out of her way."

While Ramona spoke these words, her eyes were fixed on the running water at her feet. If she had looked up, and seen the expression in Alessandro's eyes as he listened, the thing which was drawing near would have drawn near faster, would have arrived at that moment; but she did not look up. She went on, little dreaming how hard she was making it for Alessandro.

"Many's the time I've come down here, at night, to this brook, and looked at it, and wished it was a big river, so I could throw myself in, and be carried away out to the sea, dead. But it is a fearful sin, Father Salvierderra says, to take one's own life; and always the next morning, when the sun came out, and the birds sang, I've been glad enough I had not done it. Were you ever so unhappy as that, Alessandro?"

"No, Seņorita, never," replied Alessandro; "and it is thought a great disgrace, among us, to kill one's self. I think I could never do it. But, oh, Seņorita, it is a grief to think of your being unhappy. Will you always be so? Must you always stay here?"

"Oh, but I am not always unhappy!" said Ramona, with her sunny little laugh. "Indeed, I am generally very happy. Father Salvierderra says that if one does no sin, one will be always happy, and that it is a sin not to rejoice every hour of the day in the sun and the sky and the work there is to do; and there is always plenty of that." Then, her face clouding, she continued: "I suppose I shall always stay here. I have no other home; you know I was the Seņora's sister's adopted child. She died when I was little, and the Seņora kindly took me. Father Salvierderra says I must never forget to be grateful to her for all she has done for me, and I try not to."

Alessandro eyed her closely. The whole story, as Juan Can had told it to him, of the girl's birth, was burning in his thoughts. How he longed to cry out, "O my loved one, they have made you homeless in your home. They despise you. The blood of my race is in your veins; come to me; come to me! be surrounded with love!" But he dared not. How could he dare?

Some strange spell seemed to have unloosed Ramona's tongue to-night. She had never before spoken to Alessandro of her own personal history or burdens; but she went on: "The worst thing is, Alessandro, that she will not tell me who my mother was; and I do not know if she is alive or not, or anything about her. Once I asked the Seņora, but she forbade me ever to ask her again. She said she herself would tell me when it was proper for me to know. But she never has."

How the secret trembled on Alessandro's lips now. Ramona had never seemed so near, so intimate, so trusting. What would happen if he were to tell her the truth? Would the sudden knowledge draw her closer to him, or repel her?

"Have you never asked her again?" he said.

Ramona looked up astonished. "No one ever disobeyed the Seņora," she said quickly.

"I would!" exclaimed Alessandro.

"You may think so," said Ramona, "but you couldn't. When you tried, you would find you couldn't. I did ask Father Salvierderra once."

"What did he say?" asked Alessandro, breathless.

"The same thing. He said I must not ask; I was not old enough. When the time came, I would be told," answered Ramona, sadly. "I don't see what they can mean by the time's coming. What do you suppose they meant?"

"I do not know the ways of any people but my own, Seņorita," replied Alessandro. "Many things that your people do, and still more that these Americans do, are to me so strange, I know nothing what they mean. Perhaps they do not know who was your mother?"

"I am sure they do," answered Ramona, in a low tone, as if the words were wrung from her. "But let us talk about something else, Alessandro; not about sad things, about pleasant things. Let us talk about your staying here."

"Would it be truly a pleasure to the Seņorita Ramona, if I stayed?" said Alessandro.

"You know it would," answered Ramona, frankly, yet with a tremor in her voice, which Alessandro felt. "I do not see what we could any of us do without you. Felipe says he shall not let you go."

Alessandro's face glowed. "It must be as my father says, Seņorita," he said. "A messenger came from him yesterday, and I sent him back with a letter telling him what the Seņor Felipe had proposed to me, and asking him what I should do. My father is very old, Seņorita, and I do not see how he can well spare me. I am his only child, and my mother died years ago. We live alone together in our house, and when I am away he is very lonely. But he would like to have me earn the wages, I know, and I hope he will think it best for me to stay. There are many things we want to do for the village; most of our people are poor, and can do little more than get what they need to eat day by day, and my father wishes to see them better off before he dies. Now that the Americans are coming in all around us, he is afraid and anxious all the time. He wants to get a big fence built around our land, so as to show where it is; but the people cannot take much time to work on the fence; they need all their time to work for themselves and their families. Indians have a hard time to live now, Seņorita. Were you ever in Temecula?"

"No," said Ramona. "Is it a large town?"

Alessandro sighed. "Dear Seņorita, it is not a town; it is only a little village not more than twenty houses in all, and some of those are built only of tule. There is a chapel, and a graveyard. We built an adobe wall around the graveyard last year. That my father said we would do, before we built the fence round the village."

"How many people are there in the village?" asked Ramona.

"Nearly two hundred, when they are all there; but many of them are away most of the time. They must go where they can get work; they are hired by the farmers, or to do work on the great ditches, or to go as shepherds; and some of them take their wives and children with them. I do not believe the Seņorita has ever seen any very poor people."

"Oh, yes, I have, Alessandro, at Santa Barbara. There were many poor people there, and the Sisters used to give them food every week."

"Indians?" said Alessandro.

Ramona colored. "Yes," she said, "some of them were, but not like your men, Alessandro. They were very different; miserable looking; they could not read nor write, and they seemed to have no ambition."

"That is the trouble," said Alessandro, "with so many of them; it is with my father's people, too. They say, 'What is the use?' My father gets in despair with them, because they will not learn better. He gives them a great deal, but they do not seem to be any better off for it. There is only one other man in our village who can read and write, besides my father and me, Seņorita; and yet my father is all the time begging them to come to his house and learn of him. But they say they have no time; and indeed there is much truth in that, Seņorita. You see everybody has troubles, Seņorita."

Ramona had been listening with sorrowful face. All this was new to her. Until to-night, neither she nor Alessandro had spoken of private and personal matters.

"Ah, but these are real troubles," she said. "I do not think mine were real troubles at all. I wish I could do something for your people, Alessandro. If the village were only near by, I could teach them, could I not? I could teach them to read. The Sisters always said, that to teach the ignorant and the poor was the noblest work one could do. I wish I could teach your people. Have you any relatives there besides your father? Is there any one in the village that you--love, Alessandro?"

Alessandro was too much absorbed in thoughts of his people, to observe the hesitating emphasis with which Ramona asked this question.

"Yes, Seņorita, I love them all. They are like my brothers and sisters, all of my father's people," he said; "and I am unhappy about them all the time."

During the whole of this conversation Ramona had had an undercurrent of thought going on, which was making her uneasy. The more Alessandro said about his father and his people, the more she realized that he was held to Temecula by bonds that would be hard to break, the more she feared his father would not let him remain away from home for any length of time. At the thought of his going away, her very heart sickened. Taking a sudden step towards him, she said abruptly, "Alessandro, I am afraid your father will not give his consent to your staying here."

"So am I, Seņorita," he replied sadly.

"And you would not stay if he did not approve of it, of course," she said.

"How could I, Seņorita?"

"No," she said, "it would not be right;" but as she said these words, the tears filled her eyes.

Alessandro saw them. The world changed in that second. "Seņorita! Seņorita Ramona!" he cried, "tears have come in your eyes! O Seņorita, then you will not be angry if I say that I love you!" and Alessandro trembled with the terror and delight of having said the words.

Hardly did he trust his palpitating senses to be telling him true the words that followed, quick, firm, though only in a whisper,--"I know that you love me, Alessandro, and I am glad of it!" Yes, this was what the Seņorita Ramona was saying! And when he stammered, "But you, Seņorita, you do not--you could not--" "Yes, Alessandro, I do--I love you!" in the same clear, firm whisper; and the next minute Alessandro's arms were around Ramona, and he had kissed her, sobbing rather than saying, "O Seņorita, do you mean that you will go with me? that you are mine? Oh, no, beloved Seņorita, you cannot mean that!" But he was kissing her. He knew she did mean it; and Ramona, whispering, "Yes, Alessandro, I do mean it; I will go with you," clung to him with her hands, and kissed him, and repeated it, "I will go with you, I love you." And then, just then, came the Seņora's step, and her sharp cry of amazement, and there she stood, no more than an arm's-length away, looking at them with her indignant, terrible eyes.

What an hour this for Alessandro to be living over and over, as he crouched in the darkness, watching! But the bewilderment of his emotions did not dull his senses. As if stalking deer in a forest, he listened for sounds from the house. It seemed strangely still. As the darkness deepened, it seemed still stranger that no lamps were lit. Darkness in the Seņora's room, in the Seņorita's; a faint light in the dining-room, soon put out,--evidently no supper going on there. Only from under Felipe's door streamed a faint radiance; and creeping close to the veranda, Alessandro heard voices fitfully talking,--the Seņora's and Felipe's; no word from Ramona. Piteously he fixed his eyes on her window; it was open, but the curtains tight drawn; no stir, no sound. Where was she? What had been done to his love? Only the tireless caution and infinite patience of his Indian blood kept Alessandro from going to her window. But he would imperil nothing by acting on his own responsibility. He would wait, if it were till daylight, till his love made a sign. Certainly before long Seņor Felipe would come to his veranda bed, and then he could venture to speak to him. But it was near midnight when the door of Felipe's room opened, and he and his mother came out, still speaking in low tones. Felipe lay down on his couch; his mother, bending over, kissed him, bade him good-night, and went into her own room.

It had been some time now since Alessandro had left off sleeping on the veranda floor by Felipe's side. Felipe was so well it was not needful. But Felipe felt sure he would come to-night, and was not surprised when, a few minutes after the Seņora's door closed, he heard a low voice through the vines, "Seņor Felipe?"

"Hush, Alessandro," whispered Felipe. "Do not make a sound. To-morrow morning early I will see you, behind the little sheepfold. It is not safe to talk here."

"Where is the Seņorita?" Alessandro breathed rather than said.

"In her room," answered Felipe.

"Well?" said Alessandro.

"Yes," said Felipe, hoping he was not lying; and this was all Alessandro had to comfort himself with, through his long night of watching. No, not all; one other thing comforted him,--the notes of two wood-doves, that at intervals he heard, cooing to each other; just the two notes, the call and the answer, "Love?" "Here." "Love?" "Here,"--and long intervals of silence between. Plain as if written on a page was the thing they told.

"That is what my Ramona is like," thought he, "the gentle wood-dove. If she is my wife my people will call her Majel, the Wood-Dove."

XI

WHEN the Seņora bade Felipe good-night, she did not go to bed. After closing her door, she sat down to think what should be done about Ramona. It had been a hard task she had set herself, talking all the evening with Felipe without alluding to the topic uppermost in her mind. But Felipe was still nervous and irritable. She would not spoil his night's rest, she thought, by talking of disagreeable things. Moreover, she was not clear in her own mind what she wished to have done about Alessandro. If Ramona were to be sent away to the nuns, which was the only thing the Seņora could think of as yet, there would be no reason for discharging Alessandro. And with him the Seņora was by no means ready to part, though in her first anger she had been ready to dismiss him on the spot. As she pursued her reflections, the whole situation cleared itself in her mind; so easily do affairs fall into line, in the plottings and plannings of an arbitrary person, who makes in his formula no allowance for a human element which he cannot control.

Ramona should be sent in disgrace to the Sisters' School, to be a servant there for the rest of her life. The Seņora would wash her hands of her forever. Even Father Salvierderra himself could not expect her any longer to keep such a shameless creature under her roof. Her sister's written instructions had provided for the possibility of just such a contingency. Going to a secret closet in the wall, behind a life-size statue of Saint Catharine, the Seņora took out an iron box, battered and rusty with age, and set it on the bed. The key turned with difficulty in the lock. It was many years since the Seņora had opened this box. No one but herself knew of its existence. There had been many times in the history of the Moreno house when the price of the contents of that box would have averted loss and misfortune; but the Seņora no more thought of touching the treasure than if it had been guarded by angels with fiery swords. There they lay, brilliant and shining even in the dim light of the one candle,--rubies, emeralds, pearls, and yellow diamonds. The Seņora's lip curled as she looked at them. "Fine dowry, truly, for a creature like this!" she said. "Well I knew in the beginning no good would come of it; base begotten, base born, she has but carried out the instincts of her nature. I suppose I may be grateful that my own son was too pure to be her prey!" "To be given to my adopted daughter, Ramona Ortegna, on her wedding day,"--so the instructions ran,--"if she weds worthily and with your approval. Should such a misfortune occur, which I do not anticipate, as that she should prove unworthy, then these jewels, and all I have left to her of value, shall be the property of the Church."

"No mention as to what I am to do with the girl herself if she proves unworthy," thought the Seņora, bitterly; "but the Church is the place for her; no other keeping will save her from the lowest depths of disgrace. I recollect my sister said that Angus had at first intended to give the infant to the Church. Would to God he had done so, or left it with its Indian mother!" and the Seņora rose, and paced the floor. The paper of her dead sister's handwriting fell at her feet. As she walked, her long skirt swept it rustling to and fro. She stooped, picked it up, read it again, with increasing bitterness. No softness at the memory of her sister's love for the little child; no relenting. "Unworthy!" Yes, that was a mild word to apply to Ramona, now. It was all settled; and when the girl was once out of the house, the Seņora would breathe easier. She and Felipe would lead their lives together, and Felipe would wed some day. Was there a woman fair enough, good enough, for Felipe to wed? But he must wed; and the place would be gay with children's voices, and Ramona would be forgotten.

The Seņora did not know how late it was. "I will tell her to-night," she said. "I will lose no time; and now she shall hear who her mother was!"

It was a strange freak of just impulse in the Seņora's angry soul, which made her suddenly remember that Ramona had had no supper, and led her to go to the kitchen, get a jug of milk and some bread, and take them to the room. Turning the key cautiously, that Felipe might not hear, she opened the door and glided in. No voice greeted her; she held her candle high up; no Ramona in sight; the bed was empty. She glanced at the window. It was open. A terror seized the Seņora; fresh anger also. "She has run off with Alessandro," she thought, "What horrible disgrace." Standing motionless, she heard a faint, regular breathing from the other side of the bed. Hastily crossing the room, she saw a sight which had melted a heart that was only ice; but the Seņora's was stone toward Ramona. There lay Ramona on the floor, her head on a pillow at the feet of the big Madonna which stood in the corner. Her left hand was under her cheek, her right arm flung tight around the base of the statue. She was sound asleep. Her face was wet with tears. Her whole attitude was full of significance. Even helpless in sleep, she was one who had taken refuge in sanctuary. This thought had been distinct in the girl's mind when she found herself, spite of all her woe and terror, growing sleepy. "She won't dare to hurt me at the Virgin's feet," she had said; "and the window is open. Felipe would hear if I called; and Alessandro will watch." And with a prayer on her lips she fell asleep.

It was Felipe's nearness more than the Madonna's, which saved her from being roused to hear her doom. The Seņora stood for some moments looking at her, and at the open window. With a hot rush of disgraceful suspicions, she noted what she had never before thought of, that Alessandro, through all his watching with Felipe, had had close access to Ramona's window. "Shameful creature!" she repeated to herself. "And she can sleep! It is well she prayed, if the Virgin will hear such!" and she turned away, first setting down the jug of milk and the bread on a table. Then, with a sudden and still more curious mingling of justness in her wrath, she returned, and lifting the coverlet from the bed, spread it over Ramona, covering her carefully from head to foot. Then she went out and again locked the door.

Felipe, from his bed, heard and divined all, but made no sound. "Thank God, the poor child is asleep!" he said; "and my poor dear mother feared to awake me by speaking to her! What will become of us all to-morrow!" And Felipe tossed and turned, and had barely fallen into an uneasy sleep, when his mother's window opened, and she sang the first line of the sunrise hymn. Instantly Ramona joined, evidently awake and ready; and no sooner did the watching Alessandro hear the first note of her voice, than he struck in; and Margarita, who had been up for an hour, prowling, listening, peering, wondering, her soul racked between her jealousy and her fears,--even Margarita delayed not to unite; and Felipe, too, sang feebly; and the volume of the song went up as rounded and melodious as if all hearts were at peace and in harmony, instead of being all full of sorrow, confusion, or hatred. But there was no one of them all who was not the better for the singing; Ramona and Alessandro most of all.

"The saints be praised," said Alessandro. "There is my wood-dove's voice. She can sing!" And, "Alessandro was near. He watched all night. I am glad he loves me," said Ramona.

"To hear those two voices." said the Seņora; "would one suppose they could sing like that? Perhaps it is not so bad as I think."

As soon as the song was done, Alessandro ran to the sheepfold, where Felipe had said he would see him. The minutes would be like years to Alessandro till he had seen Felipe.

Ramona, when she waked and found herself carefully covered, and bread and milk standing on the table, felt much reassured. Only the Seņora's own hand had done this, she felt sure, for she had heard her the previous evening turn the key in the lock, then violently take it out; and Ramona knew well that the fact of her being thus a prisoner would be known to none but the Seņora herself. The Seņora would not set servants to gossiping. She ate her bread and milk thankfully, for she was very hungry. Then she set her room in order, said her prayers, and sat down to wait. For what? She could not imagine; in truth, she did not much try. Ramona had passed now into a country where the Seņora did not rule. She felt little fear. Felipe would not see her harmed, and she was going away presently with Alessandro. It was wonderful what peace and freedom lay in the very thought. The radiance on her face of these two new-born emotions was the first thing the Seņora observed as she opened the door, and slowly, very slowly, eyeing Ramona with a steady look, entered the room. This joyous composure on Ramona's face angered the Seņora, as it had done before, when she was dragging her up the garden-walk. It seemed to her like nothing less than brazen effrontery, and it changed the whole tone and manner of her address.

Seating herself opposite Ramona, but at the farthest side of the room, she said, in a tone scornful and insulting, "What have you to say for yourself?"

Returning the Seņora's gaze with one no less steady, Ramona spoke in the same calm tone in which she had twice the evening before attempted to stay the Seņora's wrath. This time, she was not interrupted.

"Seņora," she said slowly, "I tried to tell you last night, but you would not hear me. If you had listened, you would not have been so angry. Neither Alessandro nor I have done anything wrong, and we were not ashamed. We love each other, and we are going to be married, and go away. I thank you, Seņora, for all you have done for me; I am sure you will be a great deal happier when I am away;" and Ramona looked wistfully, with no shade of resentment, into the Seņora's dark, shrunken face. "You have been very good to do so much for a girl you did not love. Thank you for the bread and milk last night. Perhaps I can go away with Alessandro to-day. I do not know what he will wish. We had only just that minute spoken of being married, when you found us last night."

The Seņora's face was a study during the few moments that it took to say these words. She was dumb with amazement. Instantaneously, on the first sense of relief that the disgrace had not been what she supposed, followed a new wrath, if possible hotter than the first; not so much scorn, but a bitterer anger. "Marry! Marry that Indian!" she cried, as soon as she found voice. "You marry an Indian? Never! Are you mad? I will never permit it."

Ramona looked anxiously at her. "I have never disobeyed you, Seņora," she said, "but this is different from all other things; you are not my mother. I have promised to marry Alessandro."

The girl's gentleness deceived the Seņora.

"No," she said icily, "I am not your mother; but I stand in a mother's place to you. You were my sister's adopted child, and she gave you to me. You cannot marry without my permission, and I forbid you ever to speak again of marrying this Indian."

The moment had come for the Seņora Moreno to find out, to her surprise and cost, of what stuff this girl was made,--this girl, who had for fourteen years lived by her side, docile, gentle, sunny, and uncomplaining in her loneliness. Springing to her feet, and walking swiftly till she stood close face to face with the Seņora, who, herself startled by the girl's swift motion, had also risen to her feet, Ramona said, in a louder, firmer voice: "Seņora Moreno, you may forbid me as much as you please. The whole world cannot keep me from marrying Alessandro. I love him. I have promised, and I shall keep my word." And with her young lithe arms straight down at her sides, her head thrown back, Ramona flashed full in the Seņora's face a look of proud defiance. It was the first free moment her soul had ever known. She felt herself buoyed up as by wings in air. Her old terror of the Seņora fell from her like a garment thrown off.

"Pshaw!" said the Seņora, contemptuously, half amused, in spite of her wrath, by the girl's, as she thought, bootless vehemence, "you talk like a fool. Do you not know that I can shut you up in the nunnery to-morrow, if I choose?"

"No, you cannot!" replied Ramona,

"Who, then, is to hinder me." said the Seņora, insolently.

"Alessandro!" answered Ramona, proudly.

"Alessandro!" the Seņora sneered. "Alessandro! Ha! a beggarly Indian, on whom my servants will set the dogs, if I bid them! Ha, ha!"

The Seņora's sneering tone but roused Ramona more. "You would never dare!" she cried; "Felipe would not permit it!" A most unwise retort for Ramona.

"Felipe!" cried the Seņora, in a shrill voice. "How dare you pronounce his name! He will none of you, from this hour! I forbid him to speak to you. Indeed, he will never desire to set eyes on you when he hears the truth."

"You are mistaken, Seņora," answered Ramona, more gently. "Felipe is Alessandro's friend, and--mine," she added, after a second's pause.

"So, ho! the Seņorita thinks she is all-powerful in the house of Moreno!" cried the Seņora. "We will see! we will see! Follow me, Seņorita Ramona!" And throwing open the door, the Seņora strode out, looking back over her shoulder.

"Follow me!" she cried again sharply, seeing that Ramona hesitated; and Ramona went; across the passage-way leading to the dining-room, out into the veranda, down the entire length of it, to the Seņora's room,--the Seņora walking with a quick, agitated step, strangely unlike her usual gait; Ramona walking far slower than was her habit, and with her eyes bent on the ground. As they passed the dining-room door, Margarita, standing just inside, shot at Ramona a vengeful, malignant glance.

"She would help the Seņora against me in anything," thought Ramona; and she felt a thrill of fear, such as the Seņora with all her threats had not stirred.

The Seņora's windows were open. She closed them both, and drew the curtains tight. Then she locked the door, Ramona watching her every movement.

"Sit down in that chair," said the Seņora, pointing to one near the fireplace. A sudden nervous terror seized Ramona.

"I would rather stand, Seņora," she said.

"Do as I bid you." said the Seņora, in a husky tone; and Ramona obeyed. It was a low, broad armchair, and as she sank back into it, her senses seemed leaving her. She leaned her head against the back and closed her eyes. The room swam. She was roused by the Seņora's strong smelling-salts held for her to breathe, and a mocking taunt from the Seņora's iciest voice: "The Seņorita does not seem so over-strong as she did a few moments back!"

Ramona tried to reason with herself; surely no ill could happen to her, in this room, within call of the whole house. But an inexplicable terror had got possession of her; and when the Seņora, with a sneer on her face, took hold of the Saint Catharine statue, and wheeling it half around, brought into view a door in the wall, with a big iron key in the keyhole, which she proceeded to turn, Ramona shook with fright. She had read of persons who had been shut up alive in cells in the wall, and starved to death. With dilating eyes she watched the Seņora, who, all unaware of her terror, was prolonging it and intensifying it by her every act. First she took out the small iron box, and set it on a table. Then, kneeling, she drew out from an inner recess in the closet a large leather-covered box, and pulled it, grating and scraping along the floor, till it stood in front of Ramona. All this time she spoke no word, and the cruel expression of her countenance deepened each moment. The fiends had. possession of the Seņora Moreno this morning, and no mistake. A braver heart than Ramona's might have indeed been fearful, at being locked up alone with a woman who looked. like that.

Finally, she locked the door and wheeled the statue back into its place. Ramona breathed freer. She was not, after all, to be thrust into the wall closet and left to starve. She gazed with wonder at the old battered boxes. What could it all mean?

"Seņorita Ramona Ortegna," began the Seņora, drawing up a chair, and seating herself by the table on which stood the iron box, "I will now explain to you why you will not marry the Indian Alessandro."

At these words, this name, Ramona was herself again,--not her old self, her new self, Alessandro's promised wife. The very sound of his name, even on an enemy's tongue, gave her strength. The terrors fled away. She looked up, first at the Seņora, then at the nearest window. She was young and strong; at one bound, if worst came to worst, she could leap through the window, and fly for her life, calling on Alessandro.

"I shall marry the Indian Alessandro, Seņora Moreno," she said, in a tone as defiant, and now almost as insolent, as the Seņora's own.

The Seņora paid no heed to the words, except to say, "Do not interrupt me again. I have much to tell you;" and opening the box, she lifted out and placed on the table tray after tray of jewels. The sheet of written paper lay at the bottom of the box.

"Do you see this paper, Seņorita Ramona?" she asked, holding it up. Ramona bowed her head. "This was written by my sister, the Seņora Ortegna, who adopted you and gave you her name. These were her final instructions to me, in regard to the disposition to be made of the property she left to you."

Ramona's lips parted. She leaned forward, breathless, listening, while the Seņora read sentence after sentence. All the pent-up pain, wonder, fear of her childhood and her girlhood, as to the mystery of her birth, swept over her anew, now. Like one hearkening for life or death, she listened. She forgot Alessandro. She did not look at the jewels. Her eyes never left the Seņora's face. At the close of the reading, the Seņora said sternly, "You see, now, that my sister left to me the entire disposition of everything belonging to you,"

"But it hasn't said who was my mother," cried Ramona. "Is that all there is in the paper?"

The Seņora looked stupefied. Was the girl feigning? Did she care nothing that all these jewels, almost a little fortune, were to be lost to her forever?

"Who was your mother?" she exclaimed, scornfully, "There was no need to write that down. Your mother was an Indian. Everybody knew that!"

At the word "Indian," Ramona gave a low cry.

The Seņora misunderstood it. "Ay," she said, "a low, common Indian. I told my sister, when she took you, the Indian blood in your veins would show some day; and now it has come true."

Ramona's cheeks were scarlet. Her eyes flashed. "Yes, Seņora Moreno," she said, springing to her feet; "the Indian blood in my veins shows to-day. I understand many things I never understood before. Was it because I was an Indian that you have always hated me?"

"You are not an Indian, and I have never hated you," interrupted the Seņora.

Ramona heeded her not, but went on, more and more. impetuously. "And if I am an Indian, why do you object to my marrying Alessandro? Oh, I am glad I am an Indian! I am of his people. He will be glad!" The words poured like a torrent out of her lips. In her excitement she came closer and closer to the Seņora. "You are a cruel woman," she said. "I did not know it before; but now I do. If you knew I was an Indian, you had no reason to treat me so shamefully as you did last night, when you saw me with Alessandro. You have always hated me. Is my mother alive'? Where does she live? Tell me; and I will go to her to-day. Tell me! She will be glad that Alessandro loves me!"

It was a cruel look, indeed, and a crueller tone, with which the Seņora answered: "I have not the least idea who your mother was, or if she is still alive, Nobody ever knew anything about her,--some low, vicious creature, that your father married when he was out of his senses, as you are now, when you talk of marrying Alessandro!"

"He married her, then?" asked Ramona, with emphasis. "How know you that, Seņora Moreno?"

"He told my sister so," replied the Seņora, reluctantly. She grudged the girl even this much of consolation.

"What was his name?" asked Ramona.

"Phail; Angus Phail," the Seņora replied almost mechanically. She found herself strangely constrained by Ramona's imperious earnestness, and she chafed under it. The tables were being turned on her, she hardly knew how. Ramona seemed to tower in stature, and to have the bearing of the one in authority, as she stood before her pouring out passionate question after question. The Seņora turned to the larger box, and opened it. With unsteady hands she lifted out the garments which for so many years had rarely seen the light. Shawls and ribosos of damask, laces, gowns of satin, of velvet. As the Seņora flung one after another on the chairs, it was a glittering pile of shining, costly stuffs. Ramona's eyes rested on them dreamily.

"Did my adopted mother wear all these?" she asked, lifting in her hand a fold of lace, and holding it up to the light, in evident admiration.

Again the Seņora misconceived her. The girl seemed not insensible to the value and beauty of this costly raiment. Perhaps she would be lured by it.

"All these are yours, Ramona, you understand, on your wedding day, if you marry worthily, with my permission," said the Seņora, in a voice a shade less cold than had hitherto come from her lips. "Did you understand what I read you?"

The girl did not answer. She had taken up in her hand a ragged, crimson silk handkerchief, which, tied in many knots, lay in one corner of the jewel-box.

"There are pearls in that," said the Seņora; "that came with the things your father sent to my sister when he died."

Ramona's eyes gleamed. She began untying the knots. The handkerchief was old, the knots tied tight, and undisturbed for years. As she reached the last knot, and felt the hard stones, she paused. "This was my father's, then." she said.

"Yes," said the Seņora, scornfully. She thought she had detected a new baseness in the girl. She was going to set up a claim to all which had been her father's property. "They were your father's, and all these rubies, and these yellow diamonds;" and she pushed the tray towards her.

Ramona had untied the last knot. Holding the handkerchief carefully above the tray, she shook the pearls out. A strange, spicy fragrance came from the silk. The pearls fell in among the rubies, rolling right and left, making the rubies look still redder by contrast with their snowy whiteness.

"I will keep this handkerchief," she said, thrusting it as she spoke, by a swift resolute movement into her bosom. "I am very glad to have one thing that belonged to my father. The jewels, Seņora, you can give to the Church, if Father Salvierderra thinks that is right. I shall marry Alessandro;" and still keeping one hand in her bosom where she had thrust the handkerchief, she walked away and seated herself again in her chair.

Father Salvierderra! The name smote the Seņora like a spear-thrust, There could be no stronger evidence of the abnormal excitement under which she had been laboring for the last twenty-four hours, than the fact that she had not once, during all this time, thought to ask herself what Father Salvierderra would say, or might command, in this crisis. Her religion and the long habit of its outward bonds had alike gone from her in her sudden wrath against Ramona. It was with a real terror that she became conscious of this.

"Father Salvierderra?" she stammered; "he has nothing to do with it."

But Ramona saw the change in the Seņora's face, at the word, and followed up her advantage. "Father Salvierderra has to do with everything," she said boldly. "He knows Alessandro, He will not forbid me to marry him, and if he did--" Ramona stopped. She also was smitten with a sudden terror at the vista opening before her,--of a disobedience to Father Salvierderra.

"And if he did," repeated the Seņora, eyeing Ramona keenly, "would you disobey him?"

"Yes," said Ramona.

"I will tell Father Salvierderra what you say," retorted the Seņora, sarcastically, "that he may spare himself the humiliation of laying any commands on you, to be thus disobeyed."

Ramona's lip quivered, and her eyes filled with the tears which no other of the Seņora's taunts had been strong enough to bring. Dearly she loved the old monk; had loved him since her earliest recollection. His displeasure would be far more dreadful to her than the Seņora's. His would give her grief; the Seņora's, at utmost, only terror.

Clasping her hands, she said, "Oh, Seņora, have mercy! Do not say that to the Father!"

"It is my duty to tell the Father everything that happens in my family," answered the Seņora, chillingly. "He will agree with me, that if you persist in this disobedience you will deserve the severest punishment. I shall tell him all;" and she began putting the trays back in the box.

"You will not tell him as it really is, Seņora," persisted Ramona. "I will tell him myself."

"You shall not see him! I will take care of that!" cried the Seņora, so vindictively that Ramona shuddered.

"I will give you one more chance," said the Seņora, pausing in the act of folding up one of the damask gowns. "Will you obey me? Will you promise to have nothing more to do with this Indian?"

"Never, Seņora," replied Ramona; "never!"

"Then the consequences be on your own head," cried the Seņora. "Go to your room! And, hark! I forbid you to speak of all this to Seņor Felipe. Do you hear?"

Ramona bowed her head. "I hear," she said; and gliding out of the room, closed the door behind her, and instead of going to her room, sped like a hunted creature down the veranda steps, across the garden, calling in a low tone, "Felipe! Felipe! Where are you, Felipe?"

XII

THE little sheepfold, or corral, was beyond the artichoke-patch, on that southern slope whose sunshine had proved so disastrous a temptation to Margarita in the matter of drying the altar-cloth. It was almost like a terrace, this long slope; and the sheepfold, being near the bottom, was wholly out of sight of the house. This was the reason Felipe had selected it as the safest spot for his talk with Alessandro.

When Ramona reached the end of the trellised walk in the garden, she halted and looked to the right and left. No one was in sight. As she entered the Seņora's room an hour before, she had caught a glimpse of some one, she felt almost positive it was Felipe, turning off in the path to the left, leading down to the sheepfold. She stood irresolute for a moment, gazing earnestly down this path. "If the saints would only tell me where he is!" she said aloud. She trembled as she stood there, fearing each second to hear the Seņora's voice calling her. But fortune was favoring Ramona, for once; even as the words passed her lips, she saw Felipe coming slowly up the bank. She flew to meet him. "Oh, Felipe, Felipe!" she began.

"Yes, dear, I know it all," interrupted Felipe; "Alessandro has told me."

"She forbade me to speak to you, Felipe," said Ramona, "but I could not bear it. What are we to do? Where is Alessandro?"

"My mother forbade you to speak to me!" cried Felipe, in a tone of terror. "Oh, Ramona, why did you disobey her? If she sees us talking, she will be even more displeased. Fly back to your room. Leave it all to me. I will do all that I can."

"But, Felipe," began Ramona, wringing her hands in distress.

"I know! I know!" said Felipe; "but you must not make my mother any more angry. I don't know what she will do till I talk with her. Do go back to your room! Did she not tell you to stay there?"

"Yes," sobbed Ramona, "but I cannot. Oh, Felipe, I am so afraid! Do help us! Do you think you can? You won't let her shut me up in the convent, will you, Felipe? Where is Alessandro? Why can't I go away with him this minute? Where is he? Dear Felipe, let me go now."

Felipe's face was horror-stricken. "Shut you in the convent!" he gasped. "Did she say that? Ramona, dear, fly back to your room. Let me talk to her. Fly, I implore you. I can't do anything for you if she sees me talking with you now;" and he turned away, and walked swiftly down the terrace.

Ramona felt as if she were indeed alone in the world. How could she go back into that house! Slowly she walked up the garden-path again, meditating a hundred wild plans of escape. Where, where was Alessandro? Why did he not appear for her rescue? Her heart failed her; and when she entered her room, she sank on the floor in a paroxysm of hopeless weeping. If she had known that Alessandro was already a good half-hour's journey on his way to Temecula, galloping farther and farther away from her each moment, she would have despaired indeed.

This was what Felipe, after hearing the whole story, had counselled him to do. Alessandro had given him so vivid a description of the Seņora's face and tone, when she had ordered him out of her sight, that Felipe was alarmed. He had never seen his mother angry like that. He could not conceive why her wrath should have been so severe. The longer he talked with Alessandro, the more he felt that it would be wiser for him to be out of sight till the first force of her anger had been spent. "I will say that I sent you," said Felipe, "so she cannot feel that you have committed any offence in going. Come back in four days, and by that time it will be all settled what you shall do."

It went hard with Alessandro to go without seeing Ramona; but it did not need Felipe's exclamation of surprise, to convince him that it would be foolhardy to attempt it. His own judgment had told him that it would be out of the question.

"But you will tell her all, Seņor Felipe? You will tell her that it is for her sake I go?" the poor fellow said piteously, gazing into Felipe's eyes as if he would read his inmost soul.

"I will, indeed, Alessandro; I will," replied Felipe; and he held his hand out to Alessandro, as to a friend and equal. "You may trust me to do all I can do for Ramona and for you."

"God bless you, Seņor Felipe," answered Alessandro, gravely, a slight trembling of his voice alone showing how deeply he was moved.

"He's a noble fellow," said Felipe to himself, as he watched Alessandro leap on his horse, which had been tethered near the corral all night,--"a noble fellow! There isn't a man among all my friends who would have been manlier or franker than he has been in this whole business. I don't in the least wonder that Ramona loves him. He's a noble fellow! But what is to be done! What is to be done!"

Felipe was sorely perplexed. No sharp crisis of disagreement had ever arisen between him and his mother, but he felt that one was coming now. He was unaware of the extent of his influence over her. He doubted whether he could move her very far. The threat of shutting Ramona up in the convent terrified him more than he liked to admit to himself. Had she power to do that? Felipe did not know. She must believe that she had, or she would not have made the threat. Felipe's whole soul revolted at the cruel injustice of the idea.

"As if it were a sin for the poor girl to love Alessandro!" he said. "I'd help her to run away with him, if worse comes to worst. What can make my mother feel so!" And Felipe paced back and forth till the sun was high, and the sharp glare and heat reminded him that he must seek shelter; then he threw himself down under the willows. He dreaded to go into the house. His instinctive shrinking from the disagreeable, his disposition to put off till another time, held him back, hour by hour. The longer he thought the situation over, the less he knew how to broach the subject to his mother; the more uncertain he felt whether it would be wise for him to broach it at all. Suddenly he heard his name called. It was Margarita, who had been sent to call him to dinner. "Good heavens! dinner already!" he cried, springing to his feet.

"Yes, Seņor," replied Margarita, eyeing him observantly. She had seen him talking with Alessandro, had seen Alessandro galloping away down the river road. She had also gathered much from the Seņora's look, and Ramona's, as they passed the dining-room door together soon after breakfast. Margarita could have given a tolerably connected account of all that had happened within the last twenty-four hours to the chief actors in this tragedy which had so suddenly begun in the Moreno household. Not supposed to know anything, she yet knew nearly all; and her every pulse was beating high with excited conjecture and wonder as to what would come next.

Dinner was a silent and constrained meal,--Ramona absent, the fiction of her illness still kept up; Felipe embarrassed, and unlike himself; the Seņora silent, full of angry perplexity. At her first glance in Felipe's face, she thought to herself, "Ramona has spoken to him. When and how did she do it?" For it had been only a few moments after Ramona had left her presence, that she herself had followed, and, seeing the girl in her own room, had locked the door as before, and had spent the rest of the morning on the veranda within hands' reach of Ramona's window. How, when, and where had she contrived to communicate with Felipe? The longer the Seņora studied over this, the angrier and more baffled she felt; to be outwitted was even worse to her than to be disobeyed. Under her very eyes, as it were, something evidently had happened, not only against her will, but which she could not explain. Her anger even rippled out towards Felipe, and was fed by the recollection of Ramona's unwise retort, "Felipe would not let you!" What had Felipe done or said to make the girl so sure that he would be on her side and Alessandro's? Was it come to this, that she, the Seņora Moreno, was to be defied in her own house by children and servants!

It was with a tone of severe displeasure that she said to Felipe, as she rose from the dinner-table, "My son, I would like to have some conversation with you in my room, if you are at leisure."

"Certainly, mother," said Felipe, a load rolling off his mind at her having thus taken the initiative, for which he lacked courage; and walking swiftly towards her, he attempted to put his arm around her waist, as it was his affectionate habit frequently to do. She repulsed him gently, but bethinking herself, passed her hand through his arm, and leaning on it heavily as she walked, said: "This is the most fitting way, my son. I must lean more and more heavily on you each year now. Age is telling on me fast. Do you not find me greatly changed, Felipe, in the last year?"

"No, madre mia," replied Felipe, "indeed I do not. I see not that you have changed in the last ten years." And he was honest in this. His eyes did not note the changes so clear to others, and for the best of reasons. The face he saw was one no one else ever beheld; it was kindled by emotion, transfigured by love, whenever it was turned towards him.

The Seņora sighed deeply as she answered: "That must be because you so love me, Felipe. I myself see the changes even day by day. Troubles tell on me as they did not when I was younger. Even within the last twenty-four hours I seem to myself to have aged frightfully;" and she looked keenly at Felipe as she seated herself in the arm-chair where poor Ramona had swooned a few hours before. Felipe remained standing before her, gazing, with a tender expression, upon her features, but saying nothing.

"I see that Ramona has told you all!" she continued, her voice hardening as she spoke. What a fortunate wording of her sentence!

"No, mother; it was not Ramona, it was Alessandro, who told me this morning, early," Felipe answered hastily, hurrying on, to draw the conversation as far away from Ramona as possible. "He came and spoke to me last night after I was in bed; but I told him to wait till morning, and then I would hear all he had to say."

"Ah!" said the Seņora, relieved. Then, as Felipe remained silent, she asked, "And what did he say?"

"He told me all that had happened."

"All!" said the Seņora, sneeringly. "Do you suppose that he told you all?"

"He said that you had bidden him begone out of your sight," said Felipe, "and that he supposed he must go. So I told him to go at once. I thought you would prefer not to see him again."

"Ah!" said the Seņora again, startled, gratified that Felipe had so promptly seconded her action, but sorry that Alessandro had gone. "Ah, I did not know whether you would think it best to discharge him at once or not; I told him he must answer to you. I did not know but you might devise some measures by which he could be retained on the estate."

Felipe stared. Could he believe his ears? This did not sound like the relentless displeasure he had expected. Could Ramona have been dreaming? In his astonishment, he did not weigh his mother's words carefully; he did not carry his conjecture far enough; he did not stop to make sure that retaining Alessandro on the estate might not of necessity bode any good to Ramona; but with his usual impetuous ardor, sanguine, at the first glimpse of hope, that all was well, he exclaimed joyfully, "Ah, dear mother, if that could only be done, all would be well;" and, never noting the expression of his mother's face, nor pausing to take breath, he poured out all he thought and felt on the subject.

"That is just what I have been hoping for ever since I saw that he and Ramona were growing so fond of each other. He is a splendid fellow, and the best hand we have ever had on the place. All the men like him; he would make a capital overseer; and if we put him in charge of the whole estate, there would not be any objection to his marrying Ramona. That would give them a good living here with us."

"Enough!" cried the Seņora, in a voice which fell on Felipe's ears like a voice from some other world,--so hollow, so strange. He stopped speaking, and uttered an ejaculation of amazement. At the first words he had uttered, the Seņora had fixed her eyes on the floor,--a habit of hers when she wished to listen with close attention. Lifting her eyes now, fixing them full on Felipe, she regarded him with a look which not all his filial reverence could bear without resentment. It was nearly as scornful as that with which she had regarded Ramona. Felipe colored.

"Why do you look at me like that, mother?" he exclaimed. "What have I done?"

The Seņora waved her hand imperiously. "Enough!" she reiterated. "Do not say any more. I wish to think for a few moments;" and she fixed her eyes on the floor again.

Felipe studied her countenance. A more nearly rebellious feeling than he had supposed himself capable of slowly arose in his heart. Now he for the first time perceived what terror his mother must inspire in a girl like Ramona.

"Poor little one!" he thought. "If my mother looked at her as she did at me just now, I wonder she did not die."

A great storm was going on in the Seņora's bosom. Wrath against Ramona was uppermost in it. In addition to all else, the girl had now been the cause, or at least the occasion, of Felipe's having, for the first time in his whole life, angered her beyond her control.

"As if I had not suffered enough by reason of that creature," she thought bitterly to herself, "without her coming between me and Felipe!"

But nothing could long come between the Seņora and Felipe. Like a fresh lava-stream flowing down close on the track of its predecessor, came the rush of the mother's passionate love for her son close on the passionate anger at his words.

When she lifted her eyes they were full of tears, which it smote Felipe to see. As she gazed at him, they rolled down her cheeks, and she said in trembling tones: "Forgive me, my child; I had not thought anything could make me thus angry with you. That shameless creature is costing us too dear. She must leave the house."

Felipe's heart gave a bound; Ramona had not been mistaken, then. A bitter shame seized him at his mother's cruelty. But her tears made him tender; and it was in a gentle, even pleading voice that he replied: "I do not see, mother, why you call Ramona shameless. There is nothing wrong in her loving Alessandro."

"I found her in his arms!" exclaimed the Seņora.

"I know," said Felipe; "Alessandro told me that he had just at that instant told her he loved her, and she had said she loved him, and would marry him, just as you came up."

"Humph!" retorted the Seņora; "do you think that Indian would have dared to speak a word of love to the Seņorita Ramona Ortegna, if she had not conducted herself shamelessly? I wonder that he concerned himself to speak about marriage to her at all."

"Oh, mother! mother!" was all that Felipe could say to this. He was aghast. He saw now, in a flash, the whole picture as it lay in his mother's mind, and his heart sank within him. "Mother!" he repeated, in a tone which spoke volumes.

"Ay," she continued, "that is what I say. I see no reason why he hesitated to take her, as he would take any Indian squaw, with small ceremony of marrying."

"Alessandro would not take any woman that way any quicker than I would, mother," said Felipe courageously; "you do him injustice." He longed to add, "And Ramona too," but he feared to make bad matters worse by pleading for her at present.

"No, I do not," said the Seņora; "I do Alessandro full justice. I think very few men would have behaved as well as he has under the same temptation. I do not hold him in the least responsible for all that has happened. It is all Ramona's fault."

Felipe's patience gave way. He had not known, till now, how very closely this pure and gentle girl, whom he had loved as a sister in his boyhood, and had come near loving as a lover in his manhood, had twined herself around his heart. He could not remain silent another moment, and hear her thus wickedly accused.

"Mother!" he exclaimed, in a tone which made the Seņora look up at him in sudden astonishment. "Mother, I cannot help it if I make you very angry; I must speak; I can't bear to hear you say such things of Ramona. I have seen for a long time that Alessandro loved the very ground under her feet; and Ramona would not have been a woman if she had not seen it too! She has seen it, and has felt it, and has come to love him with all her soul, just as I hope some woman will love me one of these days. If I am ever loved as well as she loves Alessandro, I shall be lucky. I think they ought to be married; and I think we ought to take Alessandro on to the estate, so that they can live here. I don't see anything disgraceful in it, nor anything wrong, nor anything but what was perfectly natural. You know, mother, it isn't as if Ramona really belonged to our family; you know she is half Indian." A scornful ejaculation from his mother interrupted him here; but Felipe hurried on, partly because he was borne out of himself at last by impetuous feeling, partly that he dreaded to stop, because if he did, his mother would speak; and already he felt a terror of what her next words might be. "I have often thought about Ramona's future, mother. You know a great many men would not want to marry her, just because she is half Indian. You, yourself, would never have given your consent to my marrying her, if I had wanted to." Again an exclamation from the Seņora, this time more of horror than of scorn. But Felipe pressed on. "No, of course you would not, I always knew that; except for that, I might have loved her myself, for a sweeter girl never drew breath in this God's earth." Felipe was reckless now; having entered on this war, he would wage it with every weapon that lay within his reach; if one did not tell, another might. "You have never loved her. I don't know that you have ever even liked her; I don't think you have. I know, as a little boy, I always used to see how much kinder you were to me than to her, and I never could understand it. And you are unjust to her now. I've been watching her all summer; I've seen her and Alessandro together continually. You know yourself, mother, he has been with us on the veranda, day after day, just as if he were one of the family. I've watched them by the hour, when I lay there so sick; I thought you must have seen it too. I don't believe Alessandro has ever looked or said or done a thing I wouldn't have done in his place; and I don't believe Ramona has ever looked, said, or done a thing I would not be willing to have my own sister do!" Here Felipe paused. He had made his charge; like a young impetuous general, massing all his forces at the onset; he had no reserves. It is not the way to take Gibraltars.

When he paused, literally breathless, he had spoken so fast,--and even yet Felipe was not quite strong, so sadly had the fever undermined his constitution,--the Seņora looked at him interrogatively, and said in a now composed tone: "You do not believe that Ramona has done anything that you would not be willing to have your own sister do? Would you be willing that your own sister should marry Alessandro?"

Clever Seņora Moreno! During the few moments that Felipe had been speaking, she had perceived certain things which it would be beyond her power to do; certain others that it would be impolitic to try to do. Nothing could possibly compensate her for antagonizing Felipe. Nothing could so deeply wound her, as to have him in a resentful mood towards her; or so weaken her real control of him, as to have him feel that she arbitrarily overruled his preference or his purpose. In presence of her imperious will, even her wrath capitulated and surrendered. There would be no hot words between her and her son. He should believe that he determined the policy of the Moreno house, even in this desperate crisis.

Felipe did not answer. A better thrust was never seen on any field than the Seņora's question. She repeated it, still more deliberately, in her wonted gentle voice. The Seņora was herself again, as she had not been for a moment since she came upon Alessandro and Ramona at the brook. How just and reasonable the question sounded, as she repeated it slowly, with an expression in her eyes, of poising and weighing matters. "Would you be willing that your own sister should marry Alessandro?"

Felipe was embarrassed. He saw whither he was being led. He could give but one answer to this question. "No, mother," he said, "I should not; but--"

"Never mind buts," interrupted his mother; "we have not got to those yet;" and she smiled on Felipe,--an affectionate smile, but it somehow gave him a feeling of dread. "Of course I knew you could make but one answer to my question. If you had a sister, you would rather see her dead than married to any one of these Indians."

Felipe opened his lips eagerly, to speak. "Not so," he said.

"Wait, dear!" exclaimed his mother. "One thing at a time, I see how full your loving heart is, and I was never prouder of you as my son than when listening just now to your eloquent defence of Ramona, Perhaps you may be right and I wrong as to her character and conduct. We will not discuss those points." It was here that the Seņora had perceived some things that it would be out of her power to do. "We will not discuss those, because they do not touch the real point at issue. What it is our duty to do by Ramona, in such a matter as this, does not turn on her worthiness or unworthiness. The question is, Is it right for you to allow her to do what you would not allow your own sister to do?" The Seņora paused for a second, noted with secret satisfaction how puzzled and unhappy Felipe looked; then, in a still gentler voice, she went on, "You surely would not think that right, my son, would you?" And now the Seņora waited for an answer.

"No, mother," came reluctantly from Felipe's lips. "I suppose not; but--"

"I was sure my own son could make no other reply," interrupted the Seņora. She did not wish Felipe at present to do more than reply to her questions. "Of course it would not be right for us to let Ramona do anything which we would not let her do if she were really of our own blood. That is the way I have always looked at my obligation to her. My sister intended to rear her as her own daughter. She had given her her own name. When my sister died, she transferred to me all her right and responsibility in and for the child. You do not suppose that if your aunt had lived, she would have ever given her consent to her adopted daughter's marrying an Indian, do you?"

Again the Seņora paused for a reply, and again the reluctant Felipe said, in a low tone, "No, I suppose she would not."

"Very well. Then that lays a double obligation on us. It is not only that we are not to permit Ramona to do a thing which we would consider disgraceful to one of our own blood; we are not to betray the trust reposed in us by the only person who had a right to control her, and who transferred that trust to us. Is not that so?"

"Yes, mother," said the unhappy Felipe.

He saw the meshes closing around him. He felt that there was a flaw somewhere in his mother's reasoning, but he could not point it out; in fact, he could hardly make it distinct to himself. His brain was confused. Only one thing he saw clearly, and that was, that after all had been said and done, Ramona would still marry Alessandro. But it was evident that it would never be with his mother's consent. "Nor with mine either, openly, the way she puts it. I don't see how it can be; and yet I have promised Alessandro to do all I could for him. Curse the luck, I wish he had never set foot on the place!" said Felipe in his heart, growing unreasonable, and tired with the perplexity.

The Seņora continued: "I shall always blame myself bitterly for having failed to see what was going on. As you say, Alessandro has been with us a great deal since your illness, with his music, and singing, and one thing and another; but I can truly say that I never thought of Ramona's being in danger of looking upon him in the light of a possible lover, any more than of her looking thus upon Juan Canito, or Luigo, or any other of the herdsmen or laborers. I regret it more than words can express, and I do not know what we can do, now that it has happened."

"That's it, mother! That's it!" broke in Felipe. "You see, you see it is too late now."

The Seņora went on as if Felipe had not spoken. "I suppose you would really very much regret to part with Alessandro, and your word is in a way pledged to him, as you had asked him if he would stay on the place, Of course, now that all this has happened, it would be very unpleasant for Ramona to stay here, and see him continually--at least for a time, until she gets over this strange passion she seems to have conceived for him. It will not last. Such sudden passions never do." The Seņora artfully interpolated, "What should you think, Felipe, of having her go back to the Sisters' school for a time? She was very happy there."

The Seņora had strained a point too far. Felipe's self-control suddenly gave way, and as impetuously as he had spoken in the beginning, he spoke again now, nerved by the memory of Ramona's face and tone as she had cried to him in the garden, "Oh, Felipe, you won't let her shut me up in the convent, will you?" "Mother!" he cried, "you would never do that. You would not shut the poor girl up in the convent!"

The Seņora raised her eyebrows in astonishment. "Who spoke of shutting up?" she said. "Ramona has already been there at school. She might go again. She is not too old to learn. A change of scene and occupation is the best possible cure for a girl who has a thing of this sort to get over. Can you propose anything better, my son? What would you advise?" And a third time the Seņora paused for an answer.

These pauses and direct questions of the Seņora's were like nothing in life so much as like that stage in a spider's processes when, withdrawing a little way from a half-entangled victim, which still supposes himself free, it rests from its weaving, and watches the victim flutter. Subtle questions like these, assuming, taking for granted as settled, much which had never been settled at all, were among the best weapons in the Seņora's armory. They rarely failed her.

"Advise!" cried Felipe, excitedly. "Advise! This is what I advise--to let Ramona and Alessandro marry. I can't help all you say about our obligations. I dare say you're right; and it's a cursedly awkward complication for us, anyhow, the way you put it."

"Yes, awkward for you, as the head of our house," interrupted the Seņora, sighing. "I don't quite see how you would face it."

"Well, I don't propose to face it," continued Felipe, testily. "I don't propose to have anything to do with it, from first to last. Let her go away with him, if she wants to.'

"Without our consent?" said the Seņora, gently.

"Yes, without it, if she can't go with it; and I don't see, as you have stated it, how we could exactly take any responsibility about marrying her to Alessandro. But for heaven's sake, mother, let her go! She will go, any way. You haven't the least idea how she loves Alessandro, or how he loves her. Let her go!"

"Do you really think she would run away with him, if it came to that?" asked the Seņora, earnestly. "Run away and marry him, spite of our refusing to consent to the marriage?"

"I do," said Felipe.

"Then it is your opinion, is it, that the only thing left for us to do, is to wash our hands of it altogether, and leave her free to do what she pleases?"

"That's just what I do think, mother," replied Felipe, his heart growing lighter at her words. "That's just what I do think. We can't prevent it, and it is of no use to try. Do let us tell them they can do as they like."

"Of course, Alessandro must leave us, then," said the Seņora. "They could not stay here."

"I don't see why!" said Felipe, anxiously.

"You will, my son, if you think a moment. Could we possibly give a stronger indorsement to their marriage than by keeping them here? Don't you see that would be so?"

Felipe's eyes fell. "Then I suppose they couldn't be married here, either," he said,

"What more could we do than that, for a marriage that we heartily approved of, my son?"

"True, mother;" and Felipe clapped his hand to his forehead. "But then we force them to run away!"

"Oh, no." said the Seņora, icily. "If they go, they will go of their own accord. We hope they will never do anything so foolish and wrong. If they do, I suppose we shall always be held in a measure responsible for not having prevented it. But if you think it is not wise, or of no use to attempt that, I do not see what there is to be done."

Felipe did not speak. He felt discomfited; felt as if he had betrayed his friend Alessandro, his sister Ramona; as if a strange complication, network of circumstances, had forced him into a false position; he did not see what more he could ask, what more could be asked, of his mother; he did not see, either, that much less could have been granted to Alessandro and Ramona; he was angry, wearied, perplexed.

The Seņora studied his face. "You do not seem satisfied, Felipe dear," she said tenderly. "As, indeed, how could you be in this unfortunate state of affairs? But can you think of anything different for us to do?"

"No," said Felipe, bitterly. "I can't, that's the worst of it. It is just turning Ramona out of the house, that's all."

"Felipe! Felipe!" exclaimed the Seņora, "how unjust you are to yourself! You know you would never do that! You know that she has always had a home here as if she were a daughter; and always will have, as long as she wishes it. If she chooses to turn her back on it, and go away, is it our fault? Do not let your pity for this misguided girl blind you to what is just to yourself and to me. Turn Ramona out of the house! You know I promised my sister to bring her up as my own child; and I have always felt that my son would receive the trust from me, when I died. Ramona has a home under the Moreno roof so long as she will accept it. It is not just, Felipe, to say that we turn her out;" and tears stood in the Seņora's eyes.

"Forgive me, dear mother," cried the unhappy Felipe. "Forgive me for adding one burden to all you have to bear. Truth is, this miserable business has so distraught my senses, I can't seem to see anything as it is. Dear mother, it is very hard for you. I wish it were done with."

"Thanks for your precious sympathy, my Felipe," replied the Seņora. "If it were not for you, I should long ago have broken down beneath my cares and burdens. But among them all, have been few so grievous as this. I feel myself and our home dishonored. But we must submit. As you say, Felipe, I wish it were done with. It would be as well, perhaps, to send for Ramona at once, and tell her what we have decided. She is no doubt in great anxiety; we will see her here."

Felipe would have greatly preferred to see Ramona alone; but as he knew not how to bring this about he assented to his mother's suggestion.

Opening her door, the Seņora walked slowly down the passage-way, unlocked Ramona's door, and said: "Ramona, be so good as to come to my room. Felipe and I have something to say to you."

Ramona followed, heavy-hearted. The words, "Felipe and I," boded no good.

"The Seņora has made Felipe think just as she does herself," thought Ramona. "Oh, what will become of me!" and she stole a reproachful, imploring look at Felipe. He smiled back in a way which reassured her; but the reassurance did not last long.

"Seņorita Ramona Ortegna," began the Seņora. Felipe shivered. He had had no conception that his mother could speak in that way. The words seemed to open a gulf between Ramona and all the rest of the world, so cold and distant they sounded,--as the Seņora might speak to an intruding stranger.

"Seņorita Ramona Ortegna," she said, "my son and I have been discussing what it is best for us to do in the mortifying and humiliating position in which you place us by your relation with the Indian Alessandro. Of course you know--or you ought to know--that it is utterly impossible for us to give our consent to your making such a marriage; we should be false to a trust, and dishonor our own family name, if we did that."

Ramona's eyes dilated, her cheeks paled; she opened her lips, but no sound came from them; she looked toward Felipe, and seeing him with downcast eyes, and an expression of angry embarrassment on his face, despair seized her. Felipe had deserted their cause. Oh, where, where was Alessandro! Clasping her hands, she uttered a low cry,--a cry that cut Felipe to the heart. He was finding out, in thus being witness of Ramona's suffering, that she was far nearer and dearer to him than he had realized. It would have taken very little, at such moments as these, to have made Felipe her lover again; he felt now like springing to her side, folding his arms around her, and bidding his mother defiance. It took all the self-control he could gather, to remain silent, and trust to Ramona's understanding him later.

Ramona's cry made no break in the smooth, icy flow of the Seņora's sentences. She gave no sign of having heard it, but continued: "My son tells me that he thinks our forbidding it would make no difference; that you would go away with the man all the same. I suppose he is right in thinking so, as you yourself told me that even if Father Salvierderra forbade it, you would disobey him. Of course, if this is your determination, we are powerless. Even if I were to put you in the keeping of the Church, which is what I am sure my sister, who adopted you as her child, would do, if she were alive, you would devise some means of escape, and thus bring a still greater and more public scandal on the family. Felipe thinks that it is not worth while to attempt to bring you to reason in that way; and we shall therefore do nothing. I wish to impress it upon you that my son, as head of this house, and I, as my sister's representative, consider you a member of our own family. So long as we have a home for ourselves, that home is yours, as it always has been. If you choose to leave it, and to disgrace yourself and us by marrying an Indian, we cannot help ourselves."

The Seņora paused. Ramona did not speak. Her eyes were fixed on the Seņora's face, as if she would penetrate to her inmost soul; the girl was beginning to recognize the Seņora's true nature; her instincts and her perceptions were sharpened by love.

"Have you anything to say to me or to my son?" asked the Seņora.

"No, Seņora," replied Ramona; "I do not think of anything more to say than I said this morning. Yes," she added, "there is. Perhaps I shall not speak with you again before I go away. I thank you once more for the home you have given me for so many years. And you too, Felipe," she continued, turning towards Felipe, her face changing, all her pent-up affection and sorrow looking out of her tearful eyes,--"you too, dear Felipe. You have always been so good to me. I shall always love you as long as I live;" and she held out both her hands to him. Felipe took them in his, and was about to speak, when the Seņora interrupted him. She did not intend to have any more of this sort of affectionate familiarity between her son and Ramona.

"Are we to understand that you are taking your leave now?" she said. "Is it your purpose to go at once?"

"I do not know, Seņora," stammered Ramona; "I have not seen Alessandro; I have not heard--" And she looked up in distress at Felipe, who answered compassionately,--

"Alessandro has gone."

"Gone!" shrieked Ramona. "Gone! not gone, Felipe!"

"Only for four days," replied Felipe. "To Temecula. I thought it would be better for him to be away for a day or two. He is to come back immediately. Perhaps he will be back day after to-morrow."

"Did he want to go? What did he go for? Why didn't you let me go with him? Oh, why, why did he go?" cried Ramona.

"He went because my son told him to go," broke in the Seņora, impatient of this scene, and of the sympathy she saw struggling in Felipe's expressive features. "My son thought, and rightly, that the sight of him would be more than I could bear just now; so he ordered him to go away, and Alessandro obeyed."

Like a wounded creature at bay, Ramona turned suddenly away from Felipe, and facing the Seņora, her eyes resolute and dauntless spite of the streaming tears, exclaimed, lifting her right hand as she spoke, "You have been cruel; God will punish you!" and without waiting to see what effect her words had produced, without looking again at Felipe, she walked swiftly out of the room.

"You see," said the Seņora, "you see she defies us."

"She is desperate," said Felipe. "I am sorry I sent Alessandro away."

"No, my son," replied the Seņora, "you were wise, as you always are. It may bring her to her senses, to have a few days' reflection in solitude."

"You do not mean to keep her locked up, mother, do you?" cried Felipe.

The Seņora turned a look of apparently undisguised amazement on him. "You would not think that best, would you? Did you not say that all we could do, was simply not to interfere with her in any way? To wash our hands, so far as is possible, of all responsibility about her?"

"Yes, yes," said the baffled Felipe; "that was what I said. But, mother--" He stopped. He did not know what he wanted to say.

The Seņora looked tenderly at him, her face full of anxious inquiry.

"What is it, Felipe dear? Is there anything more you think I ought to say or do?" she asked.

"What is it you are going to do, mother?" said Felipe. "I don't seem to understand what you are going to do."

"Nothing, Felipe! You have entirely convinced me that all effort would be thrown away. I shall do nothing," replied the Seņora. "Nothing whatever."

"Then as long as Ramona is here, everything will be just as it always has been?" said Felipe.

The Seņora smiled sadly. "Dear Felipe, do you think that possible? A girl who has announced her determination to disobey not only you and me, but Father Salvierderra, who is going to bring disgrace both on the Moreno and the Ortegna name,--we can't feel exactly the same towards her as we did before, can we?"

Felipe made an impatient gesture. "No, of course not. But I mean, is everything to be just the same, outwardly, as it was before?"

"I supposed so," said the Seņora. "Was not that your idea? We must try to have it so, I think. Do not you?"

"Yes," groaned Felipe, "if we can!"

Ramona Chapters 13-19