Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/240

 Where was he, the hunted man, in this intolerable glare of day?

She thought of him fleeing always over the brown burnt moors, the pallid wastes of sand, with the stolen gold that he would be able neither to eat nor drink, and would not dare to barter. Let the guards have him if they would, she thought; he was vile.

Nothing is so cruel as youth in its scorn; she was full of scorn, and cruel. She would have seen the guards take him now, and would not have lifted her hand or opened her lips. He was a traitor and a thief.

Yet it hurt her to remember what he had done. The betrayal weighed upon her with a heavy hand. She had given him sanctuary, and he had robbed her.

A girl she knew, Fulvia, daughter of Gianno, was sitting on an open door sunning her rich gold tresses in the old Venetian way.

'Where have you been?' the girl called to her. 'There was a stir last night. Some carabineers came hunting for a man that had got away off Gorgona. They said he was Saturnino. Saturnino used to rule all the mountains over there, so my father says; have you heard tell of it?'