willows with Alessandro in the previous evening, but would watch her carefully and see whether there were any farther signs of her attempting to have clandestine interviews with him. This course she adopted, she thought, chiefly because of her affection for Margarita, and her unwillingness to expose her to the Senora's displeasure, which would be great, and terrible to bear. She was also aware of an unwillingness to bring anything to light which would reflect ever so lightly upon Alessandro in the Senora's estimation. 'And he is not really to blame,' thought Ramona, 'if a girl follows him about and makes free with him. She must have seen him at the willows, and gone down there on purpose to meet him, making a pretext of the washing. For she never in this world would have gone to wash in the dark, as he must have known, if he were not a fool. He is not the sort of person, it seems to me, to be fooling with maids. He seems as full of grave thought as Father Salvierderra. If I see anything amiss in Margarita to-day, I shall speak to her myself, kindly but firmly, and tell her to conduct herself more discreetly.' Then, as the other maiden's had done, Ramona's thoughts, being concentrated on Alessandro, altered a little from their first key, and grew softer and more imaginative; strangely enough, taking some of the phrases, as it were, out of the other maiden's mouth. 'I never saw such eyes as Alessandro has,' she said. 'I wonder any girl should make free with him. Even I myself, when he fixes his eyes on me, feel a constraint. There is something in them like the eyes of a saint, so solemn, yet so mild. I am sure he is very good.' And so the day opened; and if there were abroad in the valley that day a demon of mischief, let loose to tangle the skeins of human affairs, things could not have fallen out better for his purpose than they did; for it was not yet ten o'clock of the morning, when Ramona, sitting at her embroidery in the veranda, half hid behind the vines, saw Alessandro going with his pruning-knife in his hand towards the artichoke-patch at the east of the garden, and joining the almond orchard. 'I wonder what he is going to do there,' she thought. 'He can't be going to cut willows;' and her eyes followed him till he disappeared among the trees. Ramona was not the only one who saw this. Margarita, looking from the east window of Father Salvierderra's room, saw the same thing. 'Now's my chance!' she said; and throwing a white reboso coquettishly over her head, she slipped around the corner of the house. She ran swiftly in the direction in which Alessandro had gone. The sound of her steps reached Ramona, who, lifting her eyes, took in the whole situation at a glance. There was no possible duty, no possible message, which would take Margarita there. Ramona's cheeks blazed with a disproportionate indignation. But she bethought herself, 'Ah, the Senora may have sent her to call Alessandro!' She rose, went to the door of Felipe's room, and looked in. The Senora was sitting in the chair by Felipe's bed, with her eyes closed. Felipe was dozing. The Senora opened her eyes, and looked inquiringly at Ramona. 'Do you know where Margarita is?' said Ramona. 'In Father Salvierderra's room, or else in the kitchen helping Marda,' replied the Senora, in a whisper. 'I told her to help Marda with the peppers this morning.' Ramona nodded, returned to the veranda, and sat down to decide on her course of action. Then she rose again, and going to Father Salvierderra's room, looked in. The room was still in disorder. Margarita had left her work there unfinished. The color deepened on Ramona's cheeks. It was strange how accurately she divined each process of the incident. 'She saw him from this window,' said Ramona, 'and has run after him. It is shameful. I will go and call her back, and let her see that I saw it all. It is high time that this was stopped.' But once back in the veranda, Ramona halted, and seated herself in her chair again. The idea of seeming to spy was revolting to her. 'I will wait here till she comes back,' she said, and took up her embroidery. But she could not work. As the minutes went slowly by, she sat with her eyes fixed on the almond orchard, where first Alessandro and then Margarita had disappeared. At last she could bear it no longer. It seemed to her already a very long time. It was not in reality very long,—a half hour or so, perhaps; but it was long enough for Margarita to have made great headway, as she thought, in her talk with Alessandro, and for things to have reached just the worst possible crisis at which they could have been surprised, when Ramona suddenly appeared at the orchard gate, saying in a stern tone, 'Margarita, you are wanted in the house!' At a bad crisis, indeed, for everybody concerned. The picture which Ramona had seen, as she reached the gate, was this: Alessandro, standing with his back against the fence, his right hand hanging listlessly down, with the pruning-knife in it, his left hand in the hand of Margarita, who stood close to him, looking up in his face, with a half-saucy, half- loving expression. What made bad matters worse, was, that at the first sight of Ramona, Alessandro snatched his hand from Margarita's, and tried to draw farther off from her, looking at her with an expression which, even in her anger, Ramona could not help seeing was one of disgust and repulsion. And if Ramona saw it, how much more did Margarita! Saw it, as only a woman repulsed in presence of another woman can see and feel. The whole thing was over in the twinkling of an eye; the telling it takes double, treble the time of the happening. Before Alessandro was fairly aware what had befallen, Ramona and Margarita were disappearing from view under the garden trellis,—Ramona walking in advance, stately, silent, and Margarita following, sulky, abject in her gait, but with a raging whirlwind in her heart. It had taken only the twinkling of an eye, but it had told Margarita the truth. Alessandro too. 'My God.' he said, 'the Senorita thought me making love to that girl. May the fiends get her! The Senorita looked at me as if I were a dog. How could she think a man would look at a woman after he had once seen her! And I can never, never speak to her to tell her! Oh, this cannot be borne!' And in his rage Alessandro threw his pruning-knife whirling through the air so fiercely, it sank to the hilt in one of the old olive-trees. He wished he were dead. He was minded to flee the place. How could he ever look the Senorita in the face again! 'Perdition take that girl!' he said over and over in his helpless despair. An ill outlook for Margarita after this; and the girl had not deserved it. In Margarita's heart the pain was more clearly defined. She had seen Ramona a half-second before Alessandro had; and dreaming no special harm, except a little confusion at being seen thus standing with him,—for she would tell the Senorita all about it when matters had gone a little farther,—had not let go of Alessandro's hand. But the next second she had seen in his face a look; oh, she would never forget it, never! That she should live to have had any man look at her like that! At the first glimpse of the Senorita, all the blood in his body seemed rushing into his face, and he had snatched his hand away,—for it was Margarita herself that had taken his hand, not he hers,—had snatched his hand away, and pushed her from him, till she had nearly fallen. All this might have been borne, if it had been only a fear of the Senorita's seeing them, which had made him do it. But Margarita knew a great deal better than that. That one swift, anguished, shame-smitten, appealing, worshipping look on Alessandro's face, as his eyes rested on Ramona, was like a flash of light into Margarita's consciousness. Far better than Alessandro himself, she now knew his secret. In her first rage she did not realize either the gulf between herself and Ramona, or that between Ramona and Alessandro. Her jealous rage was as entire as if they had all been equals together. She lost her head altogether, and there was embodied insolence in the tone in which she said presently, 'Did the Senorita want me?' Turning swiftly on her, and looking her full in the eye, Ramona said: 'I saw you go to the orchard, Margarita, and I knew what you went for. I knew that you were at the brook last night with Alessandro. All I wanted of you was, to tell you that if I see anything more of this sort, I shall speak to the Senora.' 'There is no harm,' muttered Margarita, sullenly. 'I don't know what the Senorita means.' 'You know very well, Margarita,' retorted Ramona. 'You know that the Senora permits nothing of the kind. Be careful, now, what you do.' And with that the two separated, Ramona returning to the veranda and her embroidery, and Margarita to her neglected duty of making the good Father's bed. But each girl's heart was hot and unhappy; and Margarita's would have been still hotter and
