Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/212

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204
IN MAREMMA.

southerner shares with the oriental had come upon her. She was dumb as the dead within. Only her great eyes looked on, wide open, and full of anguish.

Soon the labourers lighted on the entrance-place with a shout, and she saw her sanctuary was discovered. She heard the blows of mallet and axe; she heard the grind of chisel and pickaxe. They were hewing out a wider space by which to enter. Then they lighted on the open portico of the cellula janitoris.

Writhing in her bonds, she called to them in anguish: 'you must not enter; you must not, you shall not; my little child lies there!'

She cried the same thing over and over again a hundred times, struggling and twisting madly in her captivity.

The old man heard, and put but one meaning on her words.

'She has killed her child and hidden it here!' he thought, and searched the place of burial, and perceived that recently the rock of the floor had been broken up in the first chamber.

There was a bronze Etruscan lamp burning where the stone had been cut through,