d,--so hollow, so strange. He stopped
speaking, and uttered an ejaculation of amazement. At the first words
he had uttered, the Senora had fixed her eyes on the floor,--a habit of
hers when she wished to listen with close attention. Lifting her eyes
now, fixing them full on Felipe, she regarded him with a look which not
all his filial reverence could bear without resentment. It was nearly as
scornful as that with which she had regarded Ramona. Felipe colored.

"Why do you look at me like that, mother?" he exclaimed. "What have I
done?"

The Senora waved her hand imperiously. "Enough!" she reiterated. "Do not
say any more. I wish to think for a few moments;" and she fixed her eyes
on the floor again.

Felipe studied her countenance. A more nearly rebellious feeling than
he had supposed himself capable of slowly arose in his heart. Now he for
the first time perceived what terror his mother must inspire in a girl
like Ramona.

"Poor little one!" he thought. "If my mother looked at her as she did at
me just now, I wonder she did not die."

A great storm was going on in the Senora's bosom. Wrath against Ramona
was uppermost in it. In addition to all else, the girl had now been the
cause, or at least the occasion, of Felipe's having, for the first time
in his whole life, angered her beyond her control.

"As if I had not suffered enough by reason of that creature," she
thought bitterly to herself, "without her coming between me and Felipe!"

But nothing could long come between the Senora and Felipe. Like a fresh
lava-stream flowing down close on the track of its predecessor, came the
rush of the mother's passionate love for her son close on the passionate
anger at his words.

When she lifted her eyes they were full of tears, which it smote Felipe
to see. As she gazed at him, they rolled down her cheeks, and she said
in trembling tones: "Forgive me, my child; I had not thought anything
could make me thus angry with you. That shameless creature is costing us
too dear. She must leave the house."

Felipe's heart gave a bound; Ramona had not been mistaken, then. A
bitter shame seized him at his mother's cruelty. But her tears made him
tender; and it was in a gentle, even pleading voice that he replied:
"I do not see, mother, why you call Ramona shameless. There is nothing
wrong in her loving Alessandro."

"I found her in his arms!" exclaimed the Senora.

"I know," said Felipe; "Alessandro told me that he had just at th