s too
full of Alessandro and of their future; and it had never been Ramona's
habit to dwell on the Senora in her thoughts. As from her childhood up
she had accepted the fact of the Senora's coldness toward her, so now
she accepted her injustice and opposition as part of the nature of
things, and not to be altered.

During all these hours, during the coming and going of these crowds
of fears, sorrows, memories, anticipations in Ramona's heart, all that
there was to be seen to the eye was simply a calm, quiet girl, sitting
on the veranda, diligently working at her lace-frame. Even Felipe was
deceived by her calmness, and wondered what it meant,--if it could be
that she was undergoing the change that his mother had thought possible,
and designated as coming "to her senses." Even Felipe did not know the
steadfast fibre of the girl's nature; neither did he realize what a bond
had grown between her and Alessandro. In fact, he sometimes wondered of
what this bond had been made. He had himself seen the greater part
of their intercourse with each other; nothing could have been farther
removed from anything like love-making. There had been no crisis
of incident, or marked moments of experience such as in Felipe's
imaginations of love were essential to the fulness of its growth. This
is a common mistake on the part of those who have never felt love's true
bonds. Once in those chains, one perceives that they are not of the sort
full forged in a day. They are made as the great iron cables are made,
on which bridges are swung across the widest water-channels,--not of
single huge rods, or bars, which would be stronger, perhaps, to look
at, but of myriads of the finest wires, each one by itself so fine, so
frail, it would barely hold a child's kite in the wind: by hundreds,
hundreds of thousands of such, twisted, re-twisted together, are made
the mighty cables, which do not any more swerve from their place in the
air, under the weight and jar of the ceaseless traffic and tread of two
cities, than the solid earth swerves under the same ceaseless weight and
jar. Such cables do not break.

Even Ramona herself would have found it hard to tell why she thus loved
Alessandro; how it began, or by what it grew. It had not been a sudden
adoration, like his passion for her; it was, in the beginning, simply
a response; but now it was as strong a love as his,--as strong, and as
unchangeable. The Senora's harsh words had been like a forcing-house a