"But she told me to wait."
"She told you!" repeated Alessandro. "How did you understand her
speech?"
"I do not know. Was it not a strange thing?" replied Ramona. "She
spoke in your tongue, but I thought I understood her, Ask her if she
did not say that I must not go; that it was safer to wait; that you
had so said, and you would soon come."
Alessandro repeated the words to Carmena. "Did you say that?" he
asked.
"Yes," answered Carmena.
"You see, then, she has understood the Luiseno words," he said
delightedly. "She is one of us."
"Yes," said Carmena, gravely, "she is one of us." Then, taking
Ramona's hand in both of her own for farewell, she repeated, in a
tone as of dire prophecy, "One of us, Alessandro! one of us!" And
as she gazed after their retreating forms, almost immediately
swallowed and lost in the darkness, she repeated the words again
to herself,-- "One of us! one of us! Sorrow came to me; she rides to
meet it!" and she crept back to her husband's grave, and threw
herself down, to watch till the dawn.
The road which Alessandro would naturally have taken would
carry them directly by Hartsel's again.
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