Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/277

266 Suddenly on that stillness broke the challenge of the hound's bay.

Idalia started; she knew the familiar sound that rolled out like the roll of a clarion. The colour flushed her face, she moved rapidly to the casement; through the glare of the sun, beneath the shelving precipice of rock, she saw the dog, and saw who was his comrade.

She knew him in the first moment that his longing eyes looked upward, and knew his errand there—knew that he had come to save her, or to die with her.

"O God!—he,too!"

The words escaped her involuntarily where she stood alone, leaning against her prison bars, as the hound shook all the echoes from the rocks around with the impatience of his summons; she had seen so many perish, she would fain have saved this man.

Through the space of the sultry white sun-glare that severed them his eyes met hers, and spoke in that one look all the force of the ardour, all the fidelity of the devotion, that had brought him once more to the woman who, for good or evil, had become the ruler of his life. At that gaze her own eyes filled, her lips trembled; such love had been