Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/91

80 mortal gripe at her foe's throat, had gathered to cover the poverty of their refuge, Idalia's eyes filled with soft sudden light aod gratitude—eyes that had so often looked down with cold, amused, careless scorn on those who wooed her with every courtly subtlety, with every potent magnificence of bribe.

"What depths of exhaustless tenderness there are in his heart!" she thought. "I might gaze there for ever and find no base thing! O if he could say that of mine!"

The day went on its way deepening to the full heat of noon, cloudless, sultry, lustrous, as such days of summer-length in southern lands alone can be; to him it was like one long unbroken dream, divine, voluptuous, intense as the radiance around them. They were safe here in the heart of the untrodden forest—safe, until with the fall of night their flight could be resumed. Within, the darkness of the hut, the moss and foliage he had strewn everywhere made couches yielding as velvet, and filled the air with their fresh fragrance, with the gleam of the white flowers flashing in the gloom; without, stretched the vivid light and endless growth of the woodland, the glow of colour, the foam of water, the play of sun-rays upon a thousand hills, and, above all, the deep blue of an Italian sky. Beyond, under the