Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/273

262 his looked the unbearable fíre of the eyes he had left for the carrion-birds to tear. A sickly horror, a fascination of terror, held him breathless and unresisting to the will of his foe; Erceldoune swung him upward, and held him, as though he were a dog, above his head, his own height towering in the glow of the flames.

"Oh, God!" he cried, in the blindness of his agony and of his hate. "Is there no death worse than what honest men die for this brute?"

She threw herself on him, she seized the loose folds of his linen dress, she held him so that he had no power to move unless he trod her down beneath his feet.

"Spare him!—for my sake, spare him!"

"For your sake! You dare plead by that plea to me?"

"Oh, Heaven, what matter what I plead by! Give me his life—give me his life!"

"The life of a murderer to the prayer of a wanton? A fit gift! Stand back, or I shall kill you with your paramour." "Wait!—you do not know what you do! I saved your life from him—let that buy his life from you!"

He stood motionless, as though the words paralysed him; all the tempests of his passions suddenly