amona, Alessandro snatched his hand from
Margarita's, and tried to draw farther off from her, looking at her with
an expression which, even in her anger, Ramona could not help seeing was
one of disgust and repulsion. And if Ramona saw it, how much more did
Margarita! Saw it, as only a woman repulsed in presence of another woman
can see and feel. The whole thing was over in the twinkling of an eye;
the telling it takes double, treble the time of the happening. Before
Alessandro was fairly aware what had befallen, Ramona and Margarita
were disappearing from view under the garden trellis,--Ramona walking in
advance, stately, silent, and Margarita following, sulky, abject in her
gait, but with a raging whirlwind in her heart.

It had taken only the twinkling of an eye, but it had told Margarita the
truth. Alessandro too.

"My God." he said, "the Senorita thought me making love to that girl.
May the fiends get her! The Senorita looked at me as if I were a dog. How
could she think a man would look at a woman after he had once seen her!
And I can never, never speak to her to tell her! Oh, this cannot be
borne!" And in his rage Alessandro threw his pruning-knife whirling
through the air so fiercely, it sank to the hilt in one of the old
olive-trees. He wished he were dead. He was minded to flee the place.
How could he ever look the Senorita in the face again!

"Perdition take that girl!" he said over and over in his helpless
despair. An ill outlook for Margarita after this; and the girl had not
deserved it.

In Margarita's heart the pain was more clearly defined. She had seen
Ramona a half-second before Alessandro had; and dreaming no special
harm, except a little confusion at being seen thus standing with
him,--for she would tell the Senorita all about it when matters had gone
a little farther,--had not let go of Alessandro's hand. But the next
second she had seen in his face a look; oh, she would never forget it,
never! That she should live to have had any man look at her like that!
At the first glimpse of the Senorita, all the blood in his body seemed
rushing into his face, and he had snatched his hand away,--for it was
Margarita herself that had taken his hand, not he hers,--had snatched
his hand away, and pushed her from him, till she had nearly fallen. All
this might have been borne, if it had been only a fear of the Senorita's
seeing them, which had made him do it. But Margarita knew a great deal
better than that. Th