Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/68

Rh part them. It was neither the world's calumnious breath, nor the slander of rivalled lovers, that could have terrors for the man who had pierced his way to her through dungeon walls, and torn off her the leopard fangs of Giulio Villaflor, and fought his passage with her through levelled weapons, and the storm of blows, and the battle of the hot Italian night. It was not for libel or for lie that he would surrender her—he who had thrown his manhood and his life on one reckless venturo to secure her freedom, on one uncounted stake to touch her hand again.

While he had believed that he was no more to her than the hound beside them—nay, scarce so much—he had been content to hold his silence, to save her without thought of recompense, to obey her implicitly, and to hold her as high above him as the morning stars that, through the dawn, shone in the blue heights above the forest. But now that once he knew she loved him, it would have been easier to shake off a lion from his desert foe, when once the desert rage was at its height, than to force him to yield up the claim that her love gave him to Idalia. "I knew it—I knew it!" he murmured, as he stooped his head over her, and wondered even yet whether this were aught but the sweet vain mockery