Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/261

250 him it seemed scarcely to move; every moment was a pang, every minute appeared eternity. While he waited here in the noontide glare, how might she not be tortured!—while the hours flew on, how might not her foes be wringing her proud heart! Time was passing so fast: three days, they said, had gone by since the arrest at Antina; Heaven only knew how many leagues she might have been borne since then, to what remote inaccessible recesses of Alps or Apennines, monastic prison, or mountain-shut morass, she might have been taken ere now! The fever of an intolerable agony possessed him. While he was in action he could bear it; it was something at least to be in search for her, to be in her service, to be on her track; but to sit here while those eternal matins tolled the passing seconds away, and the fishing-boat seemed to glide snail-like over the width of the sea! The swinging monotone of the chapel bell, the measured dips of the oars, seemed to beat into his brain and drive him senseless. What was it to him that she had told him his passion was hopeless? If he could give her back her freedom and her happiness, he felt that he could die in peace.

Nicolò returned very rapidly, laggard as the time