CHAPTER XXXVII.
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HE winter heliotrope blossomed in the grass and the black hellebore bore its flowers as the year was born; the nights had frost that melted with the sunrise, and were splendid with the winter-lustre of the constellations; out of sight on all the great ploughed plains the corn was again as high as a man's hand; on the hills at dark the fires of the charcoal-burners flamed with every fall of eve. It was the time she always feared; the time when the sound of a foot on the grass made her hide, when all Maremma was given up to the northern labourers, when the animals panted and trembled with terror, and the wild birds flew in panic from the waters. She had always hated and dreaded the
