United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Senora was dumb for a second; then recovering herself, she said: "Your father was the Senora Ortegna's friend more than he was mine. I was only a child, then." "Of course you did not need any daughter when you had Felipe," continued Ramona, pursuing her original line of inquiry and reflection without noticing the Senora's reply.
Ortegna's conduct had become so openly and defiantly infamous, that he even flaunted his illegitimate relations in his wife's presence; subjecting her to gross insults, spite of her helpless invalidism. This last outrage was too much for the Gonzaga blood to endure; the Senora never afterward left her apartment, or spoke to her husband.
It was not impossible that Father Salvierderra might have the same feeling. If so, she must yield; but that would go harder with her than all the rest. Almost the Senora would have been ready to keep the whole thing a secret from the Father, if he had not been at the time of the Senora Ortegna's death fully informed of all the particulars of her bequest to her adopted child.
I wish her to be yours; otherwise, she will be taken by the Church." With each second that she felt the little warm body's tender weight in her arms, Ramona Ortegna's heart had more and more yearned towards the infant. At these words she bent her face down and kissed its cheek. "Oh, no! not to the Church! I will love it as my own," she said. Angus Phail's face quivered.
Well might the Senora have dreaded to tell to Felipe the tale of the Ortegna treasure. Until he reached the bottom of the jewel-box, and found the Senora Ortegna's letter to his mother, he was in entire bewilderment at all he saw. After he had read this letter, he sat motionless for a long time, his head buried in his hands. His soul was wrung.
"But why did you not give them to the Church, dear?" asked Ramona, simply. "Why?" cried Felipe. "Because I hold them to be yours, and yours only. I would never have given them to the Church, until I had sure proof that you were dead and had left no children." Ramona's eyes were fixed earnestly on Felipe's face. "You have not read the Senora Ortegna's letter?" she said.
Will you take this child of mine, and bring it up as a child of yours, or of mine, ought to be brought up?" The tears were rolling down the Senora Ortegna's cheeks. The Lord had indeed punished her in more ways than Angus Phail knew. Her childlessness, bitter as that had been, was the least of them. Speechless, she rose, and stretched out her arms for the child. He placed it in them.
Hitherto Ramona Ortegna had, so far as was possible, carefully concealed from her family the unhappiness of her married life. Ortegna's character was indeed well known; his neglect of his wife, his shameful dissipations of all sorts, were notorious in every port in the country. But from the wife herself no one had even heard so much as a syllable of complaint.
"But did you not say that it was in the Senora 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.
Word Of The Day