Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/326

318 of torrid sand, in spending whole days alone among the sedge-pools of the Border fowl, and in biyouacking through a scorching night with Brazillian guachos, had now changed into the veriest dreamer that ever let the long hours steal away,

He lived in a land of enchantment, whose sole sunlight was a woman's glance; he gave himself up without a struggle to the only passion that had ever touched his life. Now and then forebodings swept over him; now and then his own utter ignorance of the woman to whom he was yielding up his destiny, smote him with a terrible pang, hut very rarely: in proportion to the length of his resistance to such a subjugation, was the reckless headlong force of his fall into its power. Moreover, his nature was essentially unsuspecting; and he had an old-world chivalry in him that would have made it seem to him the poorest poltroonery to cast doubt on the guardian-angel who had saved him from the very jaws of death. His mother, lost in his earliest childhood, had been of Spanish race; neglected by her lord, she had been left to break her spirit as she would against the grey walls of the King's Rest,