Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/143

132 roused from rest to a craven dread and a longing for slaughter both in one. Through his sleep words had come to him, mingling with his dreams; instincts had stirred in him while yet the weight of that death-like slumber had laid like lead on his eyelids; a voice had roused the dormant images of memory; a sense of some presence, some peril, some rising of hate and of fear, had come on him ere he had been sensible; he had shaken the clinging stupor from him with supreme effort; he had glanced upward through the boughs of cedar; he had made one eager, springing movement like a panther, with a panther's lust in his eyes, and a thousand warring passions at his heart;—then the craft of his nature, the cowardice of his nation, conquered the bolder and more ferocious impulse, as well as the jealous, wayward, tyrannous affection that still, with all his vice, lived in him; the dread of his antagonist was blent with the instinct of his blood towards treachery in the place of defiance. He feigned sleep afresh, lying as though still in the profound peace of that dreaming rest; lying so with the soft brown lashes on his cheek, and his head idly thrown back upon his arm, until the hoofs of the horses had ceased to crush the cyclamen and hellebore, and the screen of forest foliage had fallen between him and the man whom he