ll put them in some safer
place. I will take them to Los Angeles when I go. It is wonderful no one
has stolen them all these years!"

And so a second time the Ortegna jewels were passed on, by a written
bequest, into the keeping of that mysterious, certain, uncertain thing
we call the future, and delude our selves with the fancy that we
can have much to do with its shaping.

*****

Life ran smoothly in the Moreno household,--smoothly to the eye. Nothing
could be more peaceful, fairer to see, than the routine of its days,
with the simple pleasures, light tasks, and easy diligence of all.
Summer and winter were alike sunny, and had each its own joys. There was
not an antagonistic or jarring element; and, flitting back and forth,
from veranda to veranda, garden to garden, room to room, equally at
home and equally welcome everywhere, there went perpetually, running,
frisking, laughing, rejoicing, the little child that had so strangely
drifted into this happy shelter,--the little Ramona. As unconscious of
aught sad or fateful in her destiny as the blossoms with which it was
her delight to play, she sometimes seemed to her mother to have been
from the first in some mysterious way disconnected from it, removed, set
free from all that could ever by any possibility link her to sorrow.

Ramona herself bore no impress of sorrow; rather her face had now an
added radiance. There had been a period, soon after her return, when
she felt that she for the first time waked to the realization of her
bereavement; when every sight, sound, and place seemed to cry out,
mocking her with the name and the memory of Alessandro. But she wrestled
with this absorbing grief as with a sin; setting her will steadfastly
to the purposes of each day's duty, and, most of all, to the duty of
joyfulness. She repeated to herself Father Salvierderra's sayings, till
she more than knew them by heart; and she spent long hours of the night
in prayer, as it had been his wont to do.

No one but Felipe dreamed of these vigils and wrestlings. He knew them;
and he knew, too, when they ceased, and the new light of a new
victory diffused itself over Ramona's face: but neither did the first
dishearten, nor the latter encourage him. Felipe was a clearer-sighted
lover now than he had been in his earlier youth. He knew that into the
world where Ramona really lived he did not so much as enter; yet her
every act, word, look, was full of loving thoughtfulness of a