Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/190

 dun, the black, the pretty red and white, thrusting their noses through the lush Alpine grass, and lowing their welcome to her through the Alpine mists of morning. 'When one leaves one's cradle-land one does ill,' she thought wearily, as the sea gleamed in her sight, pale, smooth, ghastly, in the light of the moon; the bottomless grave that held her dead.

Each day after that she began wistfully to hope that she might hear something from Savoy. The postman came over the plains and along the shores very irregularly to Santa Tarsilla. If it were not the soldiers or the priest who had a letter, no one else ever saw such a thing save once, when Andreino had been known to have one announcing the death of a son of his, who kept a wine-shop far up the Riviera, where the orange, and the lemon, and the fragrant olive grow together by the edge of the sea. Joconda began to look wistfully for the dusty jaded figure of the tired postino coming across the sand, but she looked in vain.

The weeks came and went; the drought became greater; the plain grew yellower and the sky greyer; the air was like a