Page 106 - ramona-text

98 R A M O N A
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 Sefiorita 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 Se-
norita 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, I
—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 Sefiorita, 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 bet-
ter than Alessandro himself, she now knew his secret. In her
first rage she did not realize either the gulf between herself