“Majella, you tremble,” said Alessandro, as he threw his arms around her. “You have feared! Yet you were not alone.” He glanced at Carmena's motionless figure, standing by Baba.
“No, not alone, dear Alessandro, but it was so long!” replied Ramona; “and I feared the men had taken you, as you feared. Was there any one there?”
“No! No one has heard anything. All was well. They thought I had just come from Pachanga,” he answered.
“Except for Carmena, I should have ridden after you half an hour ago,” continued Ramona. “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.