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He would doubtless return prepared to take Ramona back with him, in case that proved the only alternative left them. Felipe grew wretched as his fancy dwelt on the picture of Ramona's future. He had been in the Temecula village.
This wise precaution of Ramona's was the salvation of everything, so far as the altar-cloth was concerned.
In a few words he told the old woman of Ramona's birth, of their marriage, and of her new name of adoption; then he said, "Take her hand, dear Majella, if you feel no fear."
Majella gives all; Alessandro gives nothing!" and he bowed his forehead on her hands, before he put them back gently on Baba's neck. Tears filled Ramona's eyes. How should she win this saddened man, this distrusting lover, to the joy which was his desert?
"He always liked Alessandro, and he loves me." It was strange how little bitterness toward the Senora was in the girl's mind; how comparatively little she thought of her. Her heart was too full of Alessandro and of their future; and it had never been Ramona's habit to dwell on the Senora in her thoughts.
Shawls and ribosos of damask, laces, gowns of satin, of velvet. As the Senora 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 Senora misconceived her.
More changed than all else in the changed Moreno household, was the relation between the Senora Moreno and her son Felipe. On the morning after Ramona's disappearance, words had been spoken by each which neither would ever forget.
The note had been thrown into Ramona's room. She was hot and cold with fear lest she might not be able to get it unobserved. What if the Senora were to go first into the room! She hardly dared look at her. But fortune is not always on the side of tyrants. The Senora was fast dozing off again, relieved that Felipe was out of speaking distance of Ramona.
The radiance on her face of these two new-born emotions was the first thing the Senora 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 Senora, as it had done before, when she was dragging her up the garden-walk.
"About one minute, mother," answered Felipe, who was leaning, as he spoke, against Ramona's open window, his arms crossed behind him. Stretching them out, and back and forth a few times, yawning idly, he said, "This heat is intolerable!" Then he sauntered leisurely down the veranda steps into the garden-walk, and seated himself on the bench under the trellis there.
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