Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/230

Rh Where her forehead rested on her hands that were thrust among the masses of her hair, the great dews started as they had never done when the scourge was lifted at Taverna.

"We shall not part alive," he pursued. "Perhaps you count on that? Your lover is the younger and the stronger; there are few men he would not worst. You rode all day through the heat and press of a battle under Verona once, I remember; maybe you wish to see a life-and-death combat."

She answered nothing; a shiver as of intense cold ran through her.

"You can enjoy your new passion, true, if he kill me;—a dead body flung with a kick into that surf, the waves to wash it seaward, none on earth to care enough for me to ask where I have drifted,—it would be easy work. Is that the reason why you wait?"

"Heaven! how can you link such guilt with me, even in thought?"

"Why not? That will be the end if we meet in your sight to-day, unless, indeed, fate turns the other way, and your lover falls through me. Sit there, Miladi, and watch the struggle; you will never have seen two harder foes. Turn your thumb downward, like those dainty, haughty Roman dames you copy