Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/170

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
162
IN MAREMMA.

angry, sullen, bloodshot eyes gleaming like a lion's out from his black bent brows.

$he pitied him, and that pity came back like dew on her own heart. Almost she loved this cruel, savage, brute-like creature, stained with so much blood, burdened with so many crimes. Had he not sent her Este!

That memory made her eyes soft as they dwelt on him; he saw their softness, and deep down in his fierce, ravenous, sullen heart he was glad.

'Does she know I robbed her tomb?' he thought—galley-slaves hear nothing.

On an instinct of pity she paused beside him a moment.

He had taken the gold of the tomb, and he was for that accursed, and he had betrayed and wronged her shelter of him, and when she had heard of his capture she had been ferocious in her triumph. Yet now that she saw him she was sorry; sorry as she felt for the great boar when she saw him plunge through the rushes bleeding and torn, with the hounds at his flanks and the steam of his panting lungs coming like smoke from his red tongue.

She longed to say a syllable to tell him that his companion in flight was safe with