Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/226



the interior stood a small castellated building flanked with towers of a singular solidity and strength, and casements built deep into the solid masonry, the narrow slits and dwarfed arches of the early centuries. The country round was dreary;—marsh and osier bed, with the rushes turning from spring green to autumn hues as the season varied, and to the left, interminable olive-fields, bounded in the distance with a sombre line of cypress, had little beauty, even when the southern sunset gave them its glow; and the place where the building stood, a black and broken pile of irregular rock, with a lake below, hemmed in by dark and stunted trees, lent only a deeper gloom and loneliness to the landscape. In the middle ages the towers had been a robber's stronghold, called the Vulture's Nest, and sorely feared by travellers; now, it was Church property, a few Cistercians held it as their convent, and, if it