ck to your room. Let me talk
to her. Fly, I implore you. I can't do anything for you if she sees me
talking with you now;" and he turned away, and walked swiftly down the
terrace.

Ramona felt as if she were indeed alone in the world. How could she
go back into that house! Slowly she walked up the garden-path again,
meditating a hundred wild plans of escape. Where, where was Alessandro?
Why did he not appear for her rescue? Her heart failed her; and when
she entered her room, she sank on the floor in a paroxysm of hopeless
weeping. If she had known that Alessandro was already a good half-hour's
journey on his way to Temecula, galloping farther and farther away from
her each moment, she would have despaired indeed.

This was what Felipe, after hearing the whole story, had counselled him
to do. Alessandro had given him so vivid a description of the Senora's
face and tone, when she had ordered him out of her sight, that Felipe
was alarmed. He had never seen his mother angry like that. He could not
conceive why her wrath should have been so severe. The longer he talked
with Alessandro, the more he felt that it would be wiser for him to be
out of sight till the first force of her anger had been spent. "I will
say that I sent you," said Felipe, "so she cannot feel that you have
committed any offence in going. Come back in four days, and by that time
it will be all settled what you shall do."

It went hard with Alessandro to go without seeing Ramona; but it did not
need Felipe's exclamation of surprise, to convince him that it would be
foolhardy to attempt it. His own judgment had told him that it would be
out of the question.

"But you will tell her all, Senor Felipe? You will tell her that it is
for her sake I go?" the poor fellow said piteously, gazing into Felipe's
eyes as if he would read his inmost soul.

"I will, indeed, Alessandro; I will," replied Felipe; and he held his
hand out to Alessandro, as to a friend and equal. "You may trust me to
do all I can do for Ramona and for you."

"God bless you, Senor Felipe," answered Alessandro, gravely, a slight
trembling of his voice alone showing how deeply he was moved.

"He's a noble fellow," said Felipe to himself, as he watched Alessandro
leap on his horse, which had been tethered near the corral all
night,--"a noble fellow! There isn't a man among all my friends who
would have been manlier or franker than he has been in this whole
business. I don't in the least won