before her marriage, that Felipe sometimes, as he gazed at her, thought
her changed even in feature? But in this very change lay a spell which
would for a long time surround her, and set her as apart from lover's
thoughts as if she were guarded by a cordon of viewless spirits. There
was a rapt look of holy communion on her face, which made itself felt by
the dullest perception, and sometimes overawed even where it attracted.
It was the same thing which Aunt Ri had felt, and formulated in her own
humorous fashion. But old Marda put it better, when, one day, in reply
to a half-terrified, low-whispered suggestion of Juan Can, to the effect
that it was "a great pity that Senor Felipe hadn't married the Senorita
years ago,--what if he were to do it yet?" she said, also under her
breath. "It is my opinion he'd as soon think of Saint Catharine herself!
Not but that it would be a great thing if it could be!"

And now the thing that the Senora had imagined to herself so often
had come about,--the presence of a little child in her house, on the
veranda, in the garden, everywhere; the sunny, joyous, blest presence.
But how differently had it come! Not Felipe's child, as she proudly
had pictured, but the child of Ramona: the friendless, banished
Ramona returned now into full honor and peace as the daughter of the
house,--Ramona, widow of Alessandro. If the child had been Felipe's own,
he could not have felt for it a greater love. From the first, the little
thing had clung to him as only second to her mother. She slept hours in
his arms, one little hand hid in his dark beard, close to his lips,
and kissed again and again when no one saw. Next to Ramona herself in
Felipe's heart came Ramona's child; and on the child he could lavish the
fondness he felt that he could never dare to show to the mother, Month
by month it grew clearer to Felipe that the mainsprings of Ramona's
life were no longer of this earth; that she walked as one in constant
fellowship with one unseen. Her frequent and calm mention of Alessandro
did not deceive him. It did not mean a lessening grief: it meant an
unchanged relation.

One thing weighed heavily on Felipe's mind,--the concealed treasure. A
sense of humiliation withheld him, day after day, from speaking of
it. But he could have no peace until Ramona knew it. Each hour that he
delayed the revelation he felt himself almost as guilty as he had held
his mother to be. At last he spoke. He had not said many wo