Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/340

Rh that were clenched like the strong fangs of a mastiff. He was a soldier at the core; all a soldier's daring, all a soldier's war-fire, rose in him, as with him alone lay her defence, her liberty, her life.

With the swiftness of a moorland deer he plunged out into the passage beyond, and dashed down the windings of the narrow ways. The darkness was like the depth of midnight, and the first false step might fling them like broken birds upon the wall that towered on either side, or down the sheer descent of the granite stairs that ever and again at intervals led into the unknown horrors of the underground crypt and vaults. Yet, as he bore her onward through the rayless, treacherous blackness, fierce joy was on him: for her pleasures, and her riches, and her brilliance, half the world might be her comrades and her candidates, but he alone shared her danger. In her prosperity so many had been round her; in her extremity he had no rival.

The rush of feet, the clamour of voices, the tremulous utterance of vague alarm pierced shrilly and íncessantly from the farther end of the building the dead silence of the night. From the broken cries which reached him, he could tell that the priests