Juan Can is a
bad man to say it. He never saw either your father or your mother,
and so he could know nothing about them. I knew your father very
well. He was not a bad man. He was my friend, and the friend of
the Senora Ortegna; and that was the reason he gave you to the
Senora Ortegna, because she had no child of her own. And I think
your mother had a good many."
"Oh!" said Ramona, relieved, for the moment, at this new view of
the situation,-- that the gift had been not as a charity to her, but to
the Senora Ortegna. "Did the Senora Ortegna want a little daughter
very much?"
"Yes, very much indeed," said the Senora, heartily and with fervor.
"She had grieved many years because she had no child."
Silence again for a brief space, during which the little lonely heart,
grappling with its vague instinct of loss and wrong, made wide
thrusts into the perplexities hedging it about, and presently
electrified the Senora by saying in a half-whisper, "Why did not
my father bring me to you first? Did he know you did not want any
daughter?"
The Senora was dumb for a second; then recovering herself, she
said: "Your father was the Senora Ortegna's friend more than he
was mine.
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