Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/361

350 Hope had been dead in them.

In the lowest depths of woe the oblivion of passion had made them senseless to all else—senseless even to the fate that must await them with the awakening of the dawn. But no thought of deliverance had ever come to them. It had seemed meet that their lives should end, once havíng reached the deepest joy that life could hold;—joy taken from the very jaws of the grave;—joy burning through the frozen chillness of despair. Yet now, when hope, vague as remembered dreams, once touched them, they felt drunk with it as with the fumes of wine.

They listened, as none ever listen save those on whose straining ear the first sound that falls will bring the message of death or life.

For a moment that hushed stillness lasted, unbroken now by even the treading of the soldier's feet. Then there broke forth the loud rejoicing bay of a hound loosed on to his quarry: shot answered shot, steel clashed on steel: the din of tumult fílled the soft peace of the early day; the old-remembered rallying words that had so often floated to her ear above the din of conflict, vibrated on it now—"Italia!" "Idalia!"—the two names blent in one.

As she heard, she rose erect; her whole frame