Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/158

 again and again to the tomb. There was the couch of rock, the floor, the walls, the faintly coloured banquet, but the hero returned no more. When the day was bright and noon was high she would go down out of its heat and light into the gloom of that cold chamber and sit upon the bed that the dead had left and watch, always vaguely and wistfully, hoping he would return to tell her all the secrets of the grave, all the glories of the skies.

Beyond this chamber in which the Lucumo and his treasures had lain, an open stone door led to another room of the same dimensions, and from that again, beyond other doors of stone, opened out two cells, divided by a wall of the natural rock. In all these three there were, as she saw, not then but in after days, stone benches and stone chairs, dust-covered. The dust had once been human bones.

Here, too, there were painted jars and bowls, bronze candelabra and utensils of beautiful workmanship and exquisite form, ivory and enamel toys, glass and gold necklaces and clasps and brooches, amber amulets, and jewellery and rings. The walls and the roofs also of these tombs