easing to
Ramona. Drawing herself away, she spoke to Margarita in a tone she had
never before in her life used. "It is not fitting to speak like that
about young men. The Senora would be displeased if she heard you," she
said, and walked swiftly away leaving poor Margarita as astounded as if
she had got a box on the ear.

She looked after Ramona's retreating figure, then after Alessandro's.
She had heard them talking together just before she came up. Thoroughly
bewildered and puzzled, she stood motionless for several seconds,
reflecting; then, shaking her head, she ran away, trying to dismiss the
harsh speech from her mind. "Alessandro must have vexed the Senorita,"
she thought, "to make her speak like that to me." But the incident was
not so easily dismissed from Margarita's thoughts. Many times in the
day it recurred to her, still a bewilderment and a puzzle, as far from
solution as ever. It was a tiny seed, whose name she did not dream of;
but it was dropped in soil where it would grow some day,--forcing-house
soil, and a bitter seed; and when it blossomed, Ramona would have an
enemy.

All unconscious, equally of Margarita's heart and her own, Ramona
proceeded to Felipe's room. Felipe was sleeping, the Senora sitting by
his side, as she had sat for days and nights,--her dark face looking
thinner and more drawn each day; her hair looking even whiter, if that
could be; and her voice growing hollow from faintness and sorrow.

"Dear Senora," whispered Ramona, "do go out for a few moments while he
sleeps, and let me watch,--just on the walk in front of the veranda. The
sun is still lying there, bright and warm. You will be ill if you do not
have air."

The Senora shook her head. "My place is here," she answered, speaking in
a dry, hard tone. Sympathy was hateful to the Senora Moreno; she wished
neither to give it nor take it. "I shall not leave him. I do not need
the air."

Ramona had a cloth-of-gold rose in her hand. The veranda eaves were now
shaded with them, hanging down like a thick fringe of golden tassels. It
was the rose Felipe loved best. Stooping, she laid it on the bed, near
Felipe's head. "He will like to see it when he wakes," she said.

The Senora seized it, and flung it far out in the room. "Take it away!
Flowers are poison when one is ill," she said coldly. "Have I never told
you that?"

"No, Senora," replied Ramona, meekly; and she glanced involuntarily at
the saucer of musk which the Senora kept