She knew better than to
slander the Senorita Ramona, or to say a word even reflecting
upon her unfavorably. Not a man or a woman there would have
borne it. They all had loved Ramona ever since she came among
them as a toddling baby. They petted her then, and idolized her
now. Not one of them whom she had not done good offices for,--
nursed them, cheered them, remembered their birthdays and their
saints'-days. To no one but her mother had Margarita unbosomed
what she knew, and what she suspected; and old Marda, frightened
at the bare pronouncing of such words, had terrified Margarita into
the solemnest of promises never, under any circumstances
whatever, to say such things to any other member of the family.
Marda did not believe them. She could not. She believed that
Margarita's jealousy had imagined all.
"And the Senora; she'd send you packing off this place in an hour,
and me too, long's I've lived here, if ever she was to know of you
blackening the Senorita. An Indian, too! You must be mad,
Margarita!"
When Margarita, in triumph, had flown to tell her that the Senora
had just dragged the Senorita Ramona up the garden-walk, and
shoved her into her room and locked the door, and that it was
because she had caught her with Alessandro at the washing-stones,
Marda first crossed herself in sheer mechanical fashion at the
shock of the story, and then cuffed Margarita's ears for telling her.
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