duty, no possible message, which would take
Margarita there. Ramona's cheeks blazed with a disproportionate
indignation. But she bethought herself, "Ah, the Senora may have sent
her to call Alessandro!" She rose, went to the door of Felipe's room,
and looked in. The Senora was sitting in the chair by Felipe's bed,
with her eyes closed. Felipe was dozing. The Senora opened her eyes, and
looked inquiringly at Ramona.

"Do you know where Margarita is?" said Ramona.

"In Father Salvierderra's room, or else in the kitchen helping Marda,"
replied the Senora, in a whisper. "I told her to help Marda with the
peppers this morning."

Ramona nodded, returned to the veranda, and sat down to decide on
her course of action. Then she rose again, and going to Father
Salvierderra's room, looked in. The room was still in disorder.
Margarita had left her work there unfinished. The color deepened on
Ramona's cheeks. It was strange how accurately she divined each process
of the incident. "She saw him from this window," said Ramona, "and has
run after him. It is shameful. I will go and call her back, and let her
see that I saw it all. It is high time that this was stopped."

But once back in the veranda, Ramona halted, and seated herself in her
chair again. The idea of seeming to spy was revolting to her.

"I will wait here till she comes back," she said, and took up her
embroidery. But she could not work. As the minutes went slowly by, she
sat with her eyes fixed on the almond orchard, where first Alessandro
and then Margarita had disappeared. At last she could bear it no longer.
It seemed to her already a very long time. It was not in reality very
long,--a half hour or so, perhaps; but it was long enough for Margarita
to have made great headway, as she thought, in her talk with Alessandro,
and for things to have reached just the worst possible crisis at which
they could have been surprised, when Ramona suddenly appeared at the
orchard gate, saying in a stern tone, "Margarita, you are wanted in the
house!" At a bad crisis, indeed, for everybody concerned. The picture
which Ramona had seen, as she reached the gate, was this: Alessandro,
standing with his back against the fence, his right hand hanging
listlessly down, with the pruning-knife in it, his left hand in the hand
of Margarita, who stood close to him, looking up in his face, with a
half-saucy, half-loving expression. What made bad matters worse, was,
that at the first sight of R