Page:Helen Hunt--Ramona.djvu/108

102 away, trying to dismiss the harsh speech from her mind. “Alessandro must have vexed the Señorita,” she thought, “to make her speak like that to me.” But the incident was not so easily dismissed from Margarita's thoughts. Many times in the day it recurred to her, still a bewilderment and a puzzle, as far from solution as ever. It was a tiny seed, whose name she did not dream of; but it was dropped in soil where it would grow some day,—forcing-house soil, and a bitter seed; and when it blossomed, Ramona would have an enemy.

All unconscious, equally of Margarita's heart and her own, Ramona proceeded to Felipe's room. Felipe was sleeping, the Señora sitting by his side, as she had sat for days and nights,—her dark face looking thinner and more drawn each day; her hair looking even whiter, if that could be; and her voice growing hollow from faintness and sorrow.

“Dear Señora,” whispered Ramona, “do go out for a few moments while he sleeps, and let me watch,—just on the walk in front of the veranda. The sun is still lying there, bright and warm. You will be ill if you do not have air.”

The Señora shook her head. “My place is here,” she answered, speaking in a dry, hard tone. Sympathy was hateful to the Señora Moreno; she wished neither to give it nor take it. “I shall not leave him. I do not need the air.”

Ramona had a cloth-of-gold rose in her hand. The veranda eaves were now shaded with them, hanging down like a thick fringe of golden tassels. It was the rose Felipe loved best. Stooping, she laid it on the bed, near Felipe's head. “He will like to see it when he wakes,” she said.

The Señora seized it, and flung it far out in the room. “Take it away! Flowers are poison when one is ill,” she said coldly. “Have I never told you that?”