Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/121

110 "I do. There is little to be feared in the open country—almost nothing from the peasantry. The horses will be fresh, and if we can reach the little fishing village nearest to Antina, I could send some barcarolo to bring in my yacht. No suspicion falls on the vessel; the soldiers I saw at your villa did not know me, and no one will hear anything from Nicolò. We have only to fear the sbirri"

"Wait; tell me all. How was it you heard of my arrest? How was it you found me?" He told her; and she listened in the soft lull of the noon silence, in the leafy twilight of the forest hut, to the story of his search for her—listened with an exceeding tenderness on the face, whose careless pride so often had smiled contemptuously on all love and all despair. He told it in very few words, lessening as much as was possible all pain he had endured, all difficulty he had conquered, lest he should seem to press a debt upon her in the recital. But the very brevity, the very generosity, touched her as no eloquence would have done. By the very omissions she knew how staunch had been this endurance, how devoted this fidelity which through good and evil report had cleaved to her, and fought their way to her.

"Oh, noble heart!"—she murmured, as she stooped