Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/14

Rh "She is here still?"

The quick Capriote caught the tremulous excitement that ran through the question, and his heart warmed to the stranger, by whom his brother had once been brought up from the black churning waves under Tiberio in the dead of a tempestuoas night.

"She is here, signor mio; she has been often here. She is at the Villa Santilla, in the Piccola Marina. I will show you the way willingly."

"No, I can find it; I know every foot of your ísland. But if yon can get me a horse, do."

The marinaro put back the gold held out to him with a loving gesture, and a smile that glistened through his brown beard: "Not from you, signor. We have not forgotten, in Capri here, the night after San Costanza's Day."

Awhile later, and Erceldoune passed up the terraced heights, through the woods, where he crushed starry cyclomen and late violets at every step, along hedges of prickly pear enclosing vineyards and fields of flax, and down rocky winding stairs shut in by walls, over which hung the white blossoms of orange-boughs.

Now and then he passed a village priest, or a