Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/98

90 came over all her face as she bowed her head, while her lips moved with the words of a Greek prayer and benediction over the life of which she knew nothing, yet which in some sense had been made her own by every law of gratitude for a great deliverance.

Then she signed to the bearers to raise the litter and go onwards. They wound slowly with their burden up the narrow pass, and she sank down on the fallen trunk levelled by his assassins for their barricade, her rich dress sweeping the blood-stained mosses, her head resting on her hands that were twisted in the lustrous masses of her hair; her eyes, with their mournful brilliance, their luminance fathomless as that of tropic skies by night, gazing into the depths of the torrent foaming below in its black bed; and at her side the Silesian hound, his mane erect, his head uplifted, his feet pawing the turf, as though he scented the blood-trail, and panted for command to hunt the evil-doers to their lair. A small antique chamber, with grey walls and snow-white draperies; an ebony crucifix with a marble Christ hanging above an altar draped with velvet, and broidered with gold, and fragrant with lilies in silver cups; a painted Gothic window