Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/312

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304
IN MAREMMA.

the wine-carts, the hay-waggons, the horses, the mules, the brawling men, the shouting children, about the gates of the Porta del Popolo. He had thrown his wallet aside when he had left Galera; he had nothing on him that the customs-guards could ask to examine. He passed them unnoticed; a tall, sinewy, black-browed, brown-cheeked shepherd, like so many that came down from the mountains, with their goats and asses, to go the round of the streets at daybreak.

She passed also; a slender, youthful figure, clad in homely homespun clothes,

She was in Rome.

She had walked sixty miles in five days.

She looked neither to right nor left.

She only watched the figure of Saturnino, towering a full head above the throngs through which his long stride passed.

Once only he paused; it was to go into a wineshop, and, under cover of drinking, ask the way to the palace that Este had inherited; the palace once of a Pope's mistress; a grand and gorgeous place, standing with its sculptured walls on a small piazza, dark and old, across the water on Trastevere. It had a wooded garden sloping to