Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/335

Rh morning, full of faith, of hope, of eager delight, and of unquestioning expectation, and he stood in the scorch of the noonday heat, stupified, the glare of sun and sea unfelt in the fiery agony that had seized him.

The little gilded caïque, was rocking at his feet, where it was moored to the landing-stairs; trifles link thought to thought, and with the memory of that first enchanted hour when he had floated with her down the water, he remembered the warning that she had given him—the warning "not to lie under the linden."

The warning had been—she had said—for his sake, not her own; was it for his that she had left him now? She had implied that some sort of peril, some threatening of danger, must await him with her friendship; was it to save him from these that she had left him thus? Then the humility that was as integrally a part of his nature, as his lofty pride of race was towards men, subdued the bitter sense of her cruelty: what was he more to her than any other to whom she gave her gracious courtesies, that he should look for recollection from her? He owed her his life;—but that debt lay on him, it left no claim to her. What was there in him that he could hope in their brief intercourse to