Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/249

238 bodily peril and the fruit of bis own noble rashness, but from the curse of the love he bore ber.

All she could do for him, was to save his mortal life; all she could be faithful to him in, was to withhold from betraying him. Time passed; she sat still there, her bands clasped round the rifle, her head drooped on its mouth, the flames now dying low to darkness, and now upleaping towards the black roof of the quarried rock. Motionless, with the tawny lustre of the fire on her, she looked like a statue of bronze, the outline of that attitude of írozen vitality» of mute despair, thrown out distinct in the ruddy líght against the darkness of the cavern around. A deadening insensibility stole on her; she thought, and thought, and thought, till thought grew an unmeaning chaos; the lengthened want of sleep brought on her the numbness of death by snow-drift; she heard nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing, till a hand touched her, and a voice was in her ear.

"Oh, heaven what horror you gave me! I traced your footsteps on the sands down to the mouth of this den, or else"

The words died on Erceldoune's lips, arrested there by the look he saw upon her face as it was raised and turned to him. In a breathless, pitiless