f you feel like that, we had better never talk about
Alessandro again. I suppose it is not possible that you should know, as
I do, that nothing but his being dead would keep him from coming
back. Thanks, dear Felipe;" and after this she did not speak again of
Alessandro.

Days went by; a week. The vintage was over. The Senora wondered if
Ramona would now ask again for a messenger to go to Temecula. Almost
even the Senora relented, as she looked into the girl's white and wasted
face, as she sat silent, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on
the willows. The altar-cloth was done, folded and laid away. It would
never hang in the Moreno chapel. It was promised, in Ramona's mind, to
Father Salvierderra. She had resolved to go to him; if he, a feeble old
man, could walk all the way between Santa Barbara and their home, she
could surely do the same. She would not lose the way. There were not
many roads; she could ask. The convent, the bare thought of which
had been so terrible to Ramona fourteen days ago, when the Senora had
threatened her with it, now seemed a heavenly refuge, the only shelter
she craved. There was a school for orphans attached to the convent at
San Juan Bautista, she knew; she would ask the Father to let her go
there, and she would spend the rest of her life in prayer, and in
teaching the orphan girls. As hour after hour she sat revolving this
plan, her fancy projected itself so vividly into the future, that she
lived years of her life. She felt herself middle-aged, old. She saw the
procession of nuns, going to vespers, leading the children by the hand;
herself wrinkled and white-haired, walking between two of the little
ones. The picture gave her peace. As soon as she grew a little stronger,
she would set off on her journey to the Father; she could not go just
yet, she was too weak; her feet trembled if she did but walk to the foot
of the garden. Alessandro was dead; there could be no doubt of that.
He was buried in that little walled graveyard of which he had told
her. Sometimes she thought she would try to go there and see his grave,
perhaps see his father; if Alessandro had told him of her, the old man
would be glad to see her; perhaps, after all, her work might lie there,
among Alessandro's people. But this looked hard: she had not courage for
it; shelter and rest were what she wanted,--the sound of the Church's
prayers, and the Father's blessing every day. The convent was the best.

She though