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To have Ramona sent to the convent, Alessandro kept as overseer of the place, and the Ortegna jewels turned into the treasury of the Church, this was the plan she had determined on in her own mind.
"Has she not treated her kindly?" asked Alessandro, in a husky voice. Juan Can's pride resented this question. "Do you suppose the Senora Moreno would do an unkindness to one under her roof?" he asked loftily. "The Senorita has been always, in all things, like Senor Felipe himself. It was so that she promised the Senora Ortegna, I have heard." "Does the Senorita know all this?" asked Alessandro.
Perhaps you think it is less disgrace to the names of Ortegna and Moreno to have her run away with him, than to be married to him here under our roof! I do not! Curse the day, I say, when I ever lent myself to breaking the girl's heart! I am going after them, to fetch them back!"
When Ortegna discovered that his wife's jewels and valuables of all kinds were gone, he fell into a great rage, and sent a messenger off, post-haste, with an insulting letter to the Senora Moreno, demanding their return.
I wish you joy, Senora Ortegna, of your first child!" and with a mock bow, and cruel sneer, he staggered by, giving the cradle an angry thrust with his foot as he passed. The brutal taunt did not much wound the Senora. The time had long since passed when unkind words from her husband could give her keen pain.
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."
Drawing himself up to the utmost of his six feet of height, and looking at her sternly, with eyes blue like steel, he said: "Senora Ortegna, you once did me a great wrong. You sinned, and the Lord has punished you. He has denied you children. I also have done a wrong; I have sinned, and the Lord has punished me. He has given me a child. I ask once more at your hands a boon.
"I do not know," she replied; which was literally true, but had the spirit of a lie in it. "I never saw your mother." "Did the Senora Ortegna ever see her?" persisted Ramona. "No, never," answered the Senora, coldly, the old wounds burning at the innocent child's unconscious touch. Ramona felt the chill, and was silent for a time, her face sad, and her eyes tearful.
"Oh!" said Ramona, relieved, for the moment, at this new view of the situation, that the gift had been not as a charity to her, but to the Senora Ortegna. "Did the Senora Ortegna want a little daughter very much?" "Yes, very much indeed," said the Senora, heartily and with fervor. "She had grieved many years because she had no child."
Yet, after he reached home, his restless conjectures took one more turn, and he sat down and wrote a letter to every priest between San Diego and Monterey, asking if there were on his books a record of the marriage of one Alessandro Assis and Ramona Ortegna.
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