Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/160

Rh The boy's earnest, impassioned gaze looked upward at her through a mist of tears.

"I will!" he murmured, fervently—"I will."

She drew her hand from him with a slight gesture of pain; she had seen that gaze from so many eyes, she had heard that vow taken by so many voices. Eyes that were sightless; voices now for ever stilled.

"Farewell," she said, gently, to both. "I will send my Albanian to you—he can be trusted; and you must go down alone to the shore. Give this to my friend, and he will know you. He will be in waiting."

She took from her hand one of her rings, a lapis-lazuli stone of ancient workmanship, and held it out to the eider Fiesoli; then, without longer pause, she passed from their presence. The boy Cesario flung himself down on the couch she had just risen from, and with his head bowed on his arms sobbed like a woman, he was a bold and gallant soldier, but he was but a youth; his father stood motionless, the morning sunlight, as it strayed through the oval in the casement, falling with a golden hue upon his grand bronzed brow and the white sweep of his patriarch's beard. Differently they both loved her, equally they alike knew their love hopeless.