der that Ramona loves him. He's a
noble fellow! But what is to be done! What is to be done!"

Felipe was sorely perplexed. No sharp crisis of disagreement had ever
arisen between him and his mother, but he felt that one was coming
now. He was unaware of the extent of his influence over her. He doubted
whether he could move her very far. The threat of shutting Ramona up in
the convent terrified him more than he liked to admit to himself. Had
she power to do that? Felipe did not know. She must believe that she
had, or she would not have made the threat. Felipe's whole soul revolted
at the cruel injustice of the idea.

"As if it were a sin for the poor girl to love Alessandro!" he said.
"I'd help her to run away with him, if worse comes to worst. What can
make my mother feel so!" And Felipe paced back and forth till the sun
was high, and the sharp glare and heat reminded him that he must seek
shelter; then he threw himself down under the willows. He dreaded to
go into the house. His instinctive shrinking from the disagreeable, his
disposition to put off till another time, held him back, hour by hour.
The longer he thought the situation over, the less he knew how to broach
the subject to his mother; the more uncertain he felt whether it would
be wise for him to broach it at all. Suddenly he heard his name called.
It was Margarita, who had been sent to call him to dinner. "Good
heavens! dinner already!" he cried, springing to his feet.

"Yes, Senor," replied Margarita, eyeing him observantly. She had seen
him talking with Alessandro, had seen Alessandro galloping away down
the river road. She had also gathered much from the Senora's look,
and Ramona's, as they passed the dining-room door together soon after
breakfast. Margarita could have given a tolerably connected account of
all that had happened within the last twenty-four hours to the chief
actors in this tragedy which had so suddenly begun in the Moreno
household. Not supposed to know anything, she yet knew nearly all; and
her every pulse was beating high with excited conjecture and wonder as
to what would come next.

Dinner was a silent and constrained meal,--Ramona absent, the fiction of
her illness still kept up; Felipe embarrassed, and unlike himself; the
Senora silent, full of angry perplexity. At her first glance in Felipe's
face, she thought to herself, "Ramona has spoken to him. When and how
did she do it?" For it had been only a few moments after Ramona had