"Is it your purpose to go at once?"
"I do not know, Senora," stammered Ramona; "I have not seen
Alessandro; I have not heard --" And she looked up in distress at
Felipe, who answered compassionately,--
"Alessandro has gone."
"Gone!" shrieked Ramona. "Gone! not gone, Felipe!"
"Only for four days," replied Felipe. "To Temecula. I thought it
would be better for him to be away for a day or two. He is to come
back immediately. Perhaps he will be back day after to-morrow."
"Did he want to go? What did he go for? Why didn't you let me go
with him? Oh, why, why did he go?" cried Ramona.
"He went because my son told him to go," broke in the Senora,
impatient of this scene, and of the sympathy she saw struggling in
Felipe's expressive features. "My son thought, and rightly, that the
sight of him would be more than I could bear just now; so he
ordered him to go away, and Alessandro obeyed."
Like a wounded creature at bay, Ramona turned 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.
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