Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/278

Rh "I am ready." The fair, pale, boyish face had the calm keenness of the Napoleonic type. "It is?" "Treason."

"Ah!"

His eyes caught the meaning, his mouth the smile, that were on hers. "Treason—against me; if to me, so to all; so to Italy. A traitor never sins once. Seek Lousada and Veni; seek your brethren, seek any one of our people. They know how to avenge the unpardonable sin. Bid them bring him here; I will give him his sentence."

The boy smiled; the smile of a St. Just.

"He has lived his life," he said, in the old Roman idiom. "His name, Eccellenza?" She stooped and breathed it on his ear : the name of Victor Vane.

Without word or pause he bowed low, took his rifle, and went on her errand; a child by years, yet already weighted with the weariness and the wisdom of maturity, by reason of the penalty he paid for having let his childish soul brood over the burdens of the peoples, and dream of liberties under the leprous shadow of a dominant priesthood, whilst other children laughed, and played, and only asked