Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/271

260 and stifle him, but a delirium of hope came on him;—the dog must be near at last! Straight in his level chase, straight as though he were running down a stag across an open plateau, fleet as the wind, and with his mighty crest bristling and his eyeballs red with flame, Sulla led on, across the marshes, across the shallow ponds, over the trembling mass of water-sodden earth, through the steaming vapour rising from the lakes—led on till he stood under the broken granite crags on which the monastery was raised above the still, black, reedy surface of the lake.

Then, with one rolling bay like thunder, he woke all the echoes of the lonely silent dawn. Afar from on high, through the gloom of an arched casement, through the swaying flicker of dank leaves, through the transverse lines of iron bars, eyes dark as night, weary as pain, looked down on him;—they were the eyes of Idalia.

She sat in the monastic cell which was her prison-chamber, with the bare hot glare of the sunlight, that burnt all nature black and barren, and made the disease-laden vapours rise up from the swamps below, scarcely entering through the narrow lancet-chink that was the sole casement of this cold stone