seeing him. At
first Alessandro was sorry for this, and tried to be friendly with her.
As soon as he felt assured that the incident had not hurt him at all in
the esteem of Ramona, he began to be sorry for Margarita. "A man should
not be rude to any maiden," he thought; and he hated to remember how he
had pushed Margarita from him, and snatched his hand away, when he
had in the outset made no objection to her taking it. But Margarita's
resentment was not to be appeased. She understood only too clearly how
little Alessandro's gentle advances meant, and she would none of them.
"Let him go to his Senorita," she said bitterly, mocking the reverential
tone in which she had overheard him pronounce the word. "She is fond
enough of him, if only the fool had eyes to see it. She'll be ready to
throw herself at his head before long, if this kind of thing keeps up.
'It is not well to speak thus freely of young men, Margarita!' Ha,
ha! Little I thought that day which way the wind set in my mistress's
temper! I'll wager she reproves me no more, under this roof or any
other! Curse her! What did she want of Alessandro, except to turn his
head, and then bid him go his way!"

To do Margarita justice, she never once dreamed of the possibility of
Ramona's wedding Alessandro. A clandestine affair, an intrigue of more
or less intensity, such as she herself might have carried on with any
one of the shepherds,--this was the utmost stretch of Margarita's angry
imaginations in regard to her young mistress's liking for Alessandro.
There was not, in her way of looking at things, any impossibility of
such a thing as that. But marriage! It might be questioned whether that
idea would have been any more startling to the Senora herself than to
Margarita.

Little had passed between Alessandro and Ramona which Margarita did not
know. The girl was always like a sprite,--here, there, everywhere, in
an hour, and with eyes which, as her mother often told her, saw on all
sides of her head. Now, fired by her new purpose, new passion, she moved
swifter than ever, and saw and heard even more, There were few hours of
any day when she did not know to a certainty where both Alessandro and
Ramona were; and there had been few meetings between them which she had
not either seen or surmised.

In the simple life of such a household as the Senora's, it was not
strange that this was possible; nevertheless, it argued and involved
untiring vigilance on Margarita's part.