e did not last long.

"Senorita Ramona Ortegna," began the Senora. Felipe shivered. He had had
no conception that his mother could speak in that way. The words seemed
to open a gulf between Ramona and all the rest of the world, so cold
and distant they sounded,--as the Senora might speak to an intruding
stranger.

"Senorita Ramona Ortegna," she said, "my son and I have been discussing
what it is best for us to do in the mortifying and humiliating position
in which you place us by your relation with the Indian Alessandro. Of
course you know--or you ought to know--that it is utterly impossible
for us to give our consent to your making such a marriage; we should be
false to a trust, and dishonor our own family name, if we did that."

Ramona's eyes dilated, her cheeks paled; she opened her lips, but no
sound came from them; she looked toward Felipe, and seeing him with
downcast eyes, and an expression of angry embarrassment on his face,
despair seized her. Felipe had deserted their cause. Oh, where, where
was Alessandro! Clasping her hands, she uttered a low cry,--a cry that
cut Felipe to the heart. He was finding out, in thus being witness of
Ramona's suffering, that she was far nearer and dearer to him than he
had realized. It would have taken very little, at such moments as these,
to have made Felipe her lover again; he felt now like springing to her
side, folding his arms around her, and bidding his mother defiance. It
took all the self-control he could gather, to remain silent, and trust
to Ramona's understanding him later.

Ramona's cry made no break in the smooth, icy flow of the Senora's
sentences. She gave no sign of having heard it, but continued: "My son
tells me that he thinks our forbidding it would make no difference; that
you would go away with the man all the same. I suppose he is right in
thinking so, as you yourself told me that even if Father Salvierderra
forbade it, you would disobey him. Of course, if this is your
determination, we are powerless. Even if I were to put you in the
keeping of the Church, which is what I am sure my sister, who adopted
you as her child, would do, if she were alive, you would devise some
means of escape, and thus bring a still greater and more public scandal
on the family. Felipe thinks that it is not worth while to attempt to
bring you to reason in that way; and we shall therefore do nothing. I
wish to impress it upon you that my son, as head of this house, and I,
as my