United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"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 Senora stood for some moments looking at her, and at the open window.
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, Senor Felipe?
He knows the difference between one year's growth and another's; I'll say that much for him, spite of the silly dreaming head he's got on his shoulders." Juan was so pleased with his clearing up in his mind as to Senor Felipe's purpose about the time of the sheep-shearing, that it put him in good humor for the day, good humor with everybody, and himself most of all.
The passion for money and reckless spending of it, the great fortunes made in one hour, thrown away in another, savored to Felipe's mind more of brigandage and gambling than of the occupations of gentlemen. He loathed them. Life under the new government grew more and more intolerable to him; both his hereditary instincts and prejudices, and his temperament, revolted.
She nervously tapped the palm of her left hand with her fan, vainly racking her brain in an effort to find a solution. Dick, who had been watching her narrowly the while, saw a strange light begin to play in her eyes in which he read Don Felipe's death as plainly as though it were written across the heavens in letters of flame. "Chiquita, you must say something," said Captain Forest.
"What is it she thinks when she looks into my eyes so?" he wondered. If he had known that the thing she was usually thinking was simply, "How much handsomer brown eyes are than blue! I wish my eyes were the color of Felipe's!" he would have perceived, perhaps, what would have saved him sorrow, if he had known it, that a girl who looked at a man thus, would be hard to win to look at him as a lover.
"Enough!" cried the Senora, 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 Senora had fixed her eyes on the floor, a habit of hers when she wished to listen with close attention.
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 Canito had been right in his sudden surmise that it was for Father Salvierderra's coming that the sheep-shearing was being delayed, and not in consequence of Senor Felipe's illness, or by the non-appearance of Luigo and his flock of sheep.
Then he threw himself on the ground under the window, and lay looking up into the sky. Capitan came up, and with a low whine stretched himself out at full length by his side. The dog knew as well as any other one of the house that danger and anguish were there. One hour passed, two, three; still no sound from Felipe's room. Alessandro rose, and looked in at the window.
Word Of The Day