liked. Ramona never went. How many times she had longed to go to Santa Barbara, or to Monterey, or Los Angeles; but to have asked the Senora's permission to accompany her on some of her now infrequent journeys to these places would have required more courage than Ramona possessed. It was now three years since she left the convent school, but she was still as fresh from the hands of the nuns as on the day when, with loving tears, they had kissed her in farewell. The few romances and tales and bits of verse she had read were of the most innocent and old-fashioned kind, and left her hardly less childlike than before. This childlikeness, combined with her happy temperament, had kept her singularly contented in her monotonous life. She had fed the birds, taken care of the flowers, kept the chapel in order, helped in light household work, embroidered, sung, and, as the Senora eight years before had bade her do, said her prayers and pleased Father Salvierderra. By processes strangely unlike, she and Alessandro had both been kept strangely free from thoughts of love and of marriage,—he by living in the shadow, and she by living in the sun; his heart and thoughts filled with perplexities and fears, hers filled by a placid routine of light and easy tasks, and the outdoor pleasures of a child. As the days went on, and Felipe still remained feeble, Alessandro meditated a bold stroke. Each time that he went to Felipe's room to sing or to play, he felt himself oppressed by the air. An hour of it made him uncomfortable. The room was large, and had two windows, and the door was never shut; yet the air seemed to Alessandro stifling. 'I should be as ill as the Senor Felipe, if I had to stay in that room, and a bed is a weakening thing, enough to pull the strongest man down,' said Alessandro to Juan Can one day. 'Do you think I should anger them if I asked them to let me bring Senor Felipe out to the veranda and put him on a bed of my making? I'd wager my head I'd put him on his feet in a week.' 'And if you did that, you might ask the Senora for the half of the estate, and get it, lad,' replied Juan, Seeing the hot blood darkening in Alessandro's face at his words, he hastened to add, 'Do not be so hot-blooded. I meant not that you would ask any reward for doing it; I was only thinking what joy it would be to the Senora to see Senor Felipe on his feet again. It has often crossed my thoughts that if he did not get up from this sickness the Senora would not be long behind him. It is but for him that she lives. And who would have the estate in that case, I have never been able to find out.' 'Would it not be the Senorita?' asked Alessandro. Juan Can laughed an ugly laugh. 'Ha, ha! Let the Senora hear you say that!' he said. 'Faith, it will be little the Senorita gets more than enough for her bread, may be, out of the Moreno estate. Hark ye, Alessandro; if you will not tell, I will tell you the story of the Senorita. You know she is not of the Moreno blood; is no relation of theirs.' 'Yes,' said Alessandro; 'Margarita has said to me that the Senorita Ramona was only the foster-child of the Senora Moreno.' 'Foster-child!' repeated Juan Can, contemptuously, 'there is something to the tale I know not, nor ever could find out; for when I was in Monterey the Ortegna house was shut, and I could not get speech of any of their people. But this much I know, that it was the Senora Ortegna that had the girl first in keeping; and there was a scandalous tale about her birth.' If Juan Can's eyes had not been purblind with old age, he would have seen that in Alessandro's face which would have made him choose his words more carefully. But he went on: 'It was after the Senora Ortegna was buried, that our Senora returned, bringing this child with her; and I do assure you, lad, I have seen the Senora look at her many a time as if she wished her dead. And it is a shame, for she was always as fair and good a child as the saints ever saw. But a stain on the blood, a stain on the blood, lad, is a bitter thing in a house. This much I know, her mother was an Indian. Once when I was in the chapel, behind the big Saint Joseph there, I overheard the Senora say as much. She was talking to Father Salvierderra, and she said, 'If the child had only the one blood in her veins, it would be different. I like not these crosses with Indians.'' If Alessandro had been civilized, he would at this word 'Indian' have bounded to his feet. Being Alessandro, he stood if possible stiller than before, and said in a low voice, 'How know you it was the mother that was the Indian?' Juan laughed again, maliciously: 'Ha, it is the Ortegna face she has; and that Ortegna, why, he was the scandal byword of the whole coast. There was not a decent woman would have spoken to him, except for his wife's sake.' 'But did you not say that it was in the Senora Ortegna's keeping that the child was?' asked Alessandro, breathing harder and faster each moment now; stupid old Juan Can so absorbed in relish of his gossip, that he noticed nothing. 'Ay, ay. So I said,' he went on; 'and so it was. There be such saints, you know; though the Lord knows if she had been minded to give shelter to all her husband's bastards, she might have taken lease of a church to hold them. But there was a story about a man's coming with this infant and leaving it in the Senora's room; and she, poor lady, never having had a child of her own, did warm to it at first sight, and kept it with her to the last; and I wager me, a hard time she had to get our Senora to take the child when she died; except that it was to spite Ortegna, I think our Senora would as soon the child had been dead.' 'Has she not treated her kindly?' asked Alessandro, in a husky voice. Juan Can's pride resented this question. 'Do you suppose the Senora Moreno would do an unkindness to one under her roof?' he asked loftily. 'The Senorita has been always, in all things, like Senor Felipe himself. It was so that she promised the Senora Ortegna, I have heard.' 'Does the Senorita know all this?' asked Alessandro. Juan Can crossed himself. 'Saints save us, no!' he exclaimed. 'I'll not forget, to my longest day, what it cost me, once I spoke in her hearing, when she was yet small. I did not know she heard; but she went to the Senora, asking who was her mother. And she said I had said her mother was no good, which in faith I did, and no wonder. And the Senora came to me, and said she, 'Juan Canito, you have been a long time in our house; but if ever I hear of your mentioning aught concerning the Senorita Ramona, on this estate or anywhere else in the country, that day you leave my service!'—And you'd not do me the ill-turn to speak of it, Alessandro, now?' said the old man, anxiously. 'My tongue runs away with me, lying here on this cursed bed, with nothing to do,—an active man like me.' 'No, I'll not speak of it, you may be assured,' said Alessandro, walking away slowly. 'Here! Here!' called Juan. 'What about that plan you had for making a bed for Senor Felipe on the verandah Was it of raw-hide you meant?' 'Ah, I had forgotten,' said Alessandro, returning. 'Yes, that was it. There is great virtue in a raw-hide, tight stretched; my father says that it is the only bed the Fathers would ever sleep on, in the Mission days. I myself like the ground even better; but my father sleeps always on the rawhide. He says it keeps him well. Do you think I might speak of it to the Senora?' 'Speak of it to Senor Felipe himself,' said Juan. 'It will be as he says. He rules this place now, from beginning to end; and it is but yesterday I held him on my knee. It is soon that the old are pushed to the wall, Alessandro.' 'Nay, Juan Canito,' replied Alessandro, kindly. 'It is not so. My father is many years older than you are, and he rules our people to-day as firmly as ever. I myself obey him, as if I were a lad still.' 'What else, then, but a lad do you call yourself, I wonder?' thought Juan; but he answered, 'It is not so with us. The old are not held in such reverence.' 'That is not well,' replied Alessandro. 'We have been taught differently. There is an old man in our village who is many, many years older than my father. He helped to carry the mortar at the building of the San Diego Mission, I do not know how many years ago. He is long
