Page 10 - ramona-text

R A M O N A
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ally clever for the day and generation to which she belonged.
Her life, the mere surface of it, if it had been written, would
have made a romance, to grow hot and cold over: sixty years
of the best of old Spain, and the wildest of New Spain, Bay
of Biscay, Gulf of iMexico, Pacific Ocean,—the waves of them
all had tossed destinies for the Sefiora. The Holy Catholic
Church had had its arms round her from first to last; and
that was what had brought her safe through, she would
have said, if she had ever said anything about herself, which
she never did,—one of her many wisdoms. So quiet, so re-
served, so gentle an exterior never was known to veil such an
imperious and passionate nature, brimful of storm, always
passing through stress; never thwarted, except at peril of
those who did it; adored and hated by turns, and each at the
hottest. A tremendous force, wherever she appeared, was
Senora Moreno; but no stranger would suspect it, to see her
gliding about, in her scanty black gown, with her rosary
hanging at her side, her soft dark eyes cast down, and an
expression of mingled melancholy and devotion on her face.
She looked simply like a sad, spiritual-minded old lady,
amiable and indolent, like her race, but sweeter and more
thoughtful than their wont. Her voice heightened this mis-
taken impression. She was never heard to speak either loud
or fast. There was at times even a curious hesitancy in her
speech, which came near being a stammer, or suggested the
measured care with which people speak who have been cured
of stammering. It made her often appear as if she did not
known her own mind; at which people sometimes took heart;
when, if they had only known the truth, they would have
known that the speech hesitated solely because the Seiiora
knew her mind so exactly that she was fmding it hard to
make the words convey it as she desired, or in a way to best
attain her ends.
About this very sheep-shearing there had been, between
her and the head shepherd, Juan Canito. called Juan Can foi
short, and to distinguish him from Juan Jose, the upper
herdsman of the cattle, some discussions which would have
been hot and angry ones in any other hands than the
Sefiora's.