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Updated: June 23, 2025
From her presses and armoires, the Signora, seeing we had a taste for such things, brought out the feminine treasures of three generations, the silk and embroidered dresses of last century, the ribosas, the jewelry, the brilliant stuffs of China and Mexico, each article with a memory and a flavor. But I must not be betrayed into writing about Ramona's house.
After long ransacking of her memory and comparing of events, she fixed the time so nearly to the true date, that it was to Felipe's mind a terrible corroboration of his fears. It was, he thought, about a week after Ramona's flight from home that Alessandro had appeared thus, alone, on foot, at Mrs. Hartsel's.
"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, Senora Moreno," she said, springing to her feet; "the Indian blood in my veins shows to-day. I understand many things I never understood before.
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.
"If there were, I too would like to stay here till I died, Majella, and never see the face of a white man again!" Already the instinct of the hunted and wounded animal to seek hiding, was striving in Alessandro's blood. "But there would be no food. We could not live here." Ramona's exclamation had set Alessandro to thinking, however.
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.
Seeing that the expression of anxious distress did not grow less on Ramona's face, he continued, in a tone still more earnest, "Will not the Senorita trust me to bring him safe down?" Ramona smiled faintly through her tears. "Yes," she said, "I will trust you. You are Alessandro, are you not?" "Yes, Senorita," he answered, greatly surprised, "I am Alessandro."
The Americans are living in my father's house, Majella," he went on, his whisper growing thick with rage. "That was what kept me so long. I was looking in at the window at them eating their supper. I thought I should go mad, Majella. If I had had my gun, I should have shot them all dead!" An almost inarticulate gasp was Ramona's first reply to this. "Living in your house!" she said.
They did not know and no one ever asked a prying question of the Senora Moreno who Ramona's parents were, whether they were living or dead, or why Ramona, her name not being Moreno, lived always in the Senora's house as a daughter, tended and attended equally with the adored Felipe.
This child was a girl, to Alessandro's delight; to Ramona's regret, so far as a loving mother can feel regret connected with her firstborn. Ramona had wished for an Alessandro; but the disappointed wish faded out of her thoughts, hour by hour, as she gazed into her baby-girl's blue eyes, eyes so blue that their color was the first thing noticed by each person who looked at her.
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