Ramona hated it too. At
times it made her faint, with a deadly faintness. But neither she nor
Felipe would have confessed as much to the Senora; and if they
had, she would have thought it all a fancy.
"Shall I stay?" asked Ramona, gently.
"As you please," replied the Senora. The simple presence of
Ramona irked her now with a feeling she did not pretend to
analyze, and would have been terrified at if she had. She would not
have dared to say to herself, in plain words: "Why is that girl well
and strong, and my Felipe lying here like to die! If Felipe dies, I
cannot bear the sight of her. What is she, to be preserved of the
saints!"
But that, or something like it, was what she felt whenever Ramona
entered the room; still more, whenever she assisted in ministering
to Felipe. If it had been possible, the Senora would have had no
hands but her own do aught for her boy. Even tears from Ramona
sometimes irritated her. "What does she know about loving Felipe!
He is nothing to her!" thought the Senora, strangely mistaken,
strangely blind, strangely forgetting how feeble is the tie of blood
in the veins by the side of love in the heart.
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