Ramona, by Helen Hunt Jackson

suddenly away from Felipe, and facing the Senora, her eyes resolute and dauntless spite of the streaming tears, exclaimed, lifting her right hand as she spoke, 'You have been cruel; God will punish you!' and without waiting to see what effect her words had produced, without looking again at Felipe, she walked swiftly out of the room.
'You see,' said the Senora, 'you see she defies us.'
'She is desperate,' said Felipe. 'I am sorry I sent Alessandro away.'
'No, my son,' replied the Senora, 'you were wise, as you always are. It may bring her to her senses, to have a few days' reflection in solitude.'
'You do not mean to keep her locked up, mother, do you?' cried Felipe.
The Senora turned a look of apparently undisguised amazement on him. 'You would not think that best, would you? Did you not say that all we could do, was simply not to interfere with her in any way? To wash our hands, so far as is possible, of all responsibility about her?'
'Yes, yes,' said the baffled Felipe; 'that was what I said. But, mother—' He stopped. He did not know what he wanted to say.
The Senora looked tenderly at him, her face full of anxious inquiry.
'What is it, Felipe dear? Is there anything more you think I ought to say or do?' she asked.
'What is it you are going to do, mother?' said Felipe. 'I don't seem to understand what you are going to do.'
'Nothing, Felipe! You have entirely convinced me that all effort would be thrown away. I shall do nothing,' replied the Senora. 'Nothing whatever.'
'Then as long as Ramona is here, everything will be just as it always has been?' said Felipe.
The Senora smiled sadly. 'Dear Felipe, do you think that possible? A girl who has announced her determination to disobey not only you and me, but Father Salvierderra, who is going to bring disgrace both on the Moreno and the Ortegna name,—we can't feel exactly the same towards her as we did before, can we?'
Felipe made an impatient gesture. 'No, of course not. But I mean, is everything to be just the same, outwardly, as it was before?'
'I supposed so,' said the Senora. 'Was not that your idea? We must try to have it so, I think. Do not you?'
'Yes,' groaned Felipe, 'if we can!'

XIII

THE Senora Moreno had never before been so discomfited as in this matter of Ramona and Alessandro. It chafed her to think over her conversation with Felipe; to recall how far the thing she finally attained was from the thing she had in view when she began. To have Ramona sent to the convent, Alessandro kept as overseer of the place, and the Ortegna jewels turned into the treasury of the Church,—this was the plan she had determined on in her own mind. Instead of this, Alessandro was not to be overseer on the place; Ramona would not go to the convent: she would be married to Alessandro, and they would go away together; and the Ortegna jewels,—well, that was a thing to be decided in the future; that should be left to Father Salvierderra to decide. Bold as the Senora was, she had not quite the courage requisite to take that question wholly into her own hands.
One thing was clear, Felipe must not be consulted in regard to them. He had never known of them, and need not now. Felipe was far too much in sympathy with Ramona to take a just view of the situation. He would be sure to have a quixotic idea of Ramona's right of ownership. It was not impossible that Father Salvierderra might have the same feeling. If so, she must yield; but that would go harder with her than all the rest. Almost the Senora would have been ready to keep the whole thing a secret from the Father, if he had not been at the time of the Senora Ortegna's death fully informed of all the particulars of her bequest to her adopted child. At any rate, it would be nearly a year before the Father came again, and in the mean time she would not risk writing about it. The treasure was as safe in Saint Catharine's keeping as it had been all these fourteen years; it should still lie hidden there. When Ramona went away with Alessandro, she would write to Father Salvierderra, simply stating the facts in her own way, and telling him that all further questions must wait for decision until they met.
And so she plotted and planned, and mapped out the future in her tireless weaving brain, till she was somewhat soothed for the partial failure of her plans.
There is nothing so skilful in its own defence as imperious pride. It has an ingenious system of its own, of reprisals,—a system so ingenious that the defeat must be sore indeed, after which it cannot still find some booty to bring off! And even greater than this ingenuity at reprisals is its capacity for self-deception. In this regard, it outdoes vanity a thousandfold. Wounded vanity knows when it is mortally hurt; and limps off the field, piteous, all disguises thrown away. But pride carries its banner to the last; and fast as it is driven from one field unfurls it in another, never admitting that there is a shade less honor in the second field than in the first, or in the third than in the second; and so on till death. It is impossible not to have a certain sort of admiration for this kind of pride. Cruel, those who have it, are to all who come in their way; but they are equally cruel to themselves, when pride demands the sacrifice. Such pride as this has led many a forlorn hope, on the earth, when all other motives have died out of men's breasts; has won many a crown, which has not been called by its true name.
Before the afternoon was over, the Senora had her plan, her chart of the future, as it were, all reconstructed; the sting of her discomfiture soothed; the placid quiet of her manner restored; her habitual occupations also, and little ways, all resumed. She was going to do 'nothing' in regard to Ramona. Only she herself knew how much that meant; how bitterly much! She wished she were sure that Felipe also would do 'nothing;' but her mind still misgave her about Felipe. Unpityingly she had led him on, and entangled him in his own words, step by step, till she had brought him to the position she wished him to take. Ostensibly, his position and hers were one, their action a unit; all the same, she did not deceive herself as to his real feeling about the affair. He loved Ramona. He liked Alessandro. Barring the question of family pride, which he had hardly thought of till she suggested it, and which he would not dwell on apart from her continuing to press it,—barring this, he would have liked to have Alessandro marry Ramona and remain on the place. All this would come uppermost in Felipe's mind again when he was removed from the pressure of her influence. Nevertheless, she did not intend to speak with him on the subject again, or to permit him to speak to her. Her ends would be best attained by taking and keeping the ground that the question of their non-interference having been settled once for all, the painful topic should never be renewed between them. In patient silence they must await Ramona's action; must bear whatever of disgrace and pain she chose to inflict on the family which had sheltered her from her infancy till now.
The details of the 'nothing' she proposed to do, slowly arranged themselves in her mind. There should be no apparent change in Ramona's position in the house. She should come and go as freely as ever; no watch on her movements; she should eat, sleep, rise up and sit down with them, as before; there should be not a word, or act, that Felipe's sympathetic sensitiveness could construe into any provocation to Ramona to run away. Nevertheless, Ramona should be made to feel, every moment of every hour, that she was in disgrace; that she was with them, but not of them; that she had chosen an alien's position, and must abide by it. How this was to be done, the Senora did not put in words to herself, but she knew very well. If anything would bring the girl to her senses, this would. There might still be a hope, the Senora believed, so little did she know Ramona's nature, or the depth of her affection for Alessandro, that she might be in