“All these are yours, Ramona, you understand, on your wedding day, if you marry worthily, with my permission,” said the Senora, in a voice a shade less cold than had hitherto come from her lips. “Did you understand what I read you?”
The girl did not answer. She had taken up in her hand a ragged, crimson silk handkerchief, which, tied in many knots, lay in one corner of the jewel-box.
“There are pearls in that,” said the Senora; “that came with the things your father sent to my sister when he died.”
Ramona's eyes gleamed. She began untying the knots. The handkerchief was old, the knots tied tight, and undisturbed for years. As she reached the last knot, and felt the hard stones, she paused. “This was my father's, then.” she said.
“Yes,” said the Senora, scornfully. She thought she had detected a new baseness in the girl. She was going to set up a claim to all which had been her father's property. “They were your father's, and all these rubies, and these yellow diamonds;” and she pushed the tray towards her.
Ramona had untied the last knot. Holding the handkerchief carefully above the tray, she shook the pearls out. A strange, spicy fragrance came from the silk. The pearls fell in among the rubies, rolling right and left, making the rubies look still redder by contrast with their snowy whiteness.
“I will keep this handkerchief,” she said, thrusting it as she spoke, by a swift resolute movement into her bosom. “I am very glad to have one thing that belonged to my father. The jewels, Senora, you can give to the Church, if Father Salvierderra thinks that is right. I shall marry Alessandro;” and still keeping one hand in her bosom where she had thrust the handkerchief, she walked away and seated herself again in her chair.
Father Salvierderra! The name smote the Senora like a spear-thrust, There could be no stronger evidence of the abnormal excitement under which she had been laboring for the last twenty-four hours, than the fact that she had not once, during all this time, thought to ask herself what Father Salvierderra would say, or might command, in this crisis. Her religion and the long habit of its outward bonds had alike gone from her in her sudden wrath against Ramona. It was with a real terror that she became conscious of this.
“Father Salvierderra?” she stammered; “he has nothing to do with it.”
But Ramona saw the change in the Senora's face, at the word, and followed up her advantage. “Father Salvierderra has to do with everything,” she said boldly. “He knows Alessandro, He will not forbid me to marry him, and if he did—” Ramona stopped. She also was smitten with a sudden terror at the vista opening before her,—of a disobedience to Father Salvierderra.