Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/174

 she loved those 'liquid numbers' with all her soul, and in her thoughts he was vaguely blended with the dead hero of the tomb.

So she dreamed the hours away, whilst her bodily strength laboured at the crank of the waterwheel, at the mounds of seaweed, at the sickle, with which she cut the wild oats for the mule, at the heavy sails which she dragged over the sands for Joconda to mend. So she never saw the lads who came with the coasters, and who would fain have had play or flattery with her in the evening-time, when the tarred ropes lay idle over the sea-wall, and their tartanas anchored in the weed-choked, sand-filled bay; and they grew angry, and hooted after her, 'Musoncella!' and turned their thoughts to Mariannina, the pilot Giano's daughter, who had yellow hair, and red-brown eyes, and was esteemed a beauty, and kept her pink and white skin safe by going up out of the heat every summer to the house of an aunt who lived high on the Volterrian hills, although Giano's daughter at her best was, beside the lustrous colour of Musa's beauty, as a pale aster in September's sun is beside the glow of the autumnal rose.

But Giano's daughter, Mariannina, smiled