Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/153



HE child never after that night spoke of what she had seen in the tomb. She shut it in her thoughts with many another thing, and did not share it. But her mind was constantly busy with these dead people, who all slept on their beds of rock and when the air touched them fled. She longed to see them, know of them, go with them.

There was no one to tell her anything. In this ancient land of theirs no one knew of the Etruscans. Strangers came and dug indeed about the Maremma, and rifled the graves that they found, this they knew, but there were no graves known of at Santa Tarsilla, and the subject had no interest for them, and was not even intelligible. In