Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/27

16 outspread for birds in southern mode, the deep-grown screens of myrtles fencing villa lands, and the wild growth of rocky channels, where hidden streams ran below earth, and made the vegetation riot rank and thick, where the snake found its lair, and the mosquito swarmed in hundreds, and the hot heavy vapour uprose like clouds of steam. Now and then her eyes turned on him in the darkness of cypress shadows, or where some yawning river-bed, yellow and reed-choked, and unfathomed in the gloom, was crossed with a measureless leap, their horses close abreast. For all except the echo of the ringing hoofs trampling through ripening corn, or sounding loud on rocky pathways, there was utter silence between them.

The night was fast waning, the stars growing larger, till the whole skies seemed on fire with their brilliance; the hours were passing swiftly—the hours which alone were safety. Here and there, from lonely marshes, the bittern's booming call sounded, desolate and mournful; or, as the trodden millet-stalks muffled the noise of their gallop, the cry of the cicala could be heard from under the maize. The world went by them vague as a dream, mist-like as a cloud; ruined temples, shadowy landscapes, waters glistening white, monastic piles darkly looming down from rocky