Page:Helen Hunt--Ramona.djvu/47

Rh It is the worst, and not the best of each, that remains.”

But the promise once given, Señora Ortegna was content. Well she knew that her sister would not lie, nor evade a trust. The little Ramona's future was assured. During the last years of the unhappy woman's life the child was her only comfort. Ortegna's conduct had become so openly and defiantly infamous, that he even flaunted his illegitimate relations in his wife's presence; subjecting her to gross insults, spite of her helpless invalidism. This last outrage was too much for the Gonzaga blood to endure; the Señora never afterward left her apartment, or spoke to her husband. Once more she sent for her sister to come; this time, to see her die. Every valuable she possessed, jewels, laces, brocades, and damasks, she gave into her sister's charge, to save them from falling into the hands of the base creature that she knew only too well would stand in her place as soon as the funeral services had been said over her dead body.

Stealthily, as if she had been a thief, the sorrowing Señora Moreno conveyed her sister's wardrobe, article by article, out of the house, to be sent to her own home. It was the wardrobe of a princess. The Ortegnas lavished money always on the women whose hearts they broke; and never ceased to demand of them that they should sit superbly arrayed in their lonely wretchedness.

One hour after the funeral, with a scant and icy ceremony of farewell to her dead sister's husband, Señora Moreno, leading the little four-year-old Ramona by the hand, left the house, and early the next morning set sail for home.

When Ortegna discovered that his wife's jewels and valuables of all kinds were gone, he fell into a great rage, and sent a messenger off, post-haste, with an insulting letter to the Señora Moreno, demanding