Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/245

 to wonder who had the right to see to the burial and pay for the mass. She was known to have had a little money hidden somewhere, but perhaps she had people that belonged to her over the mountains in far Savoy.

None of them thought of Musa, who, after that first bitter cry of self-reproach had burst from her, had sat mute and still beside the dead, with the white dog between her knees.

When they fetched the priest from vespers, and he spoke to her, she stared; his words went by her without awaking in her any sense of them; she was dumb as the dog was; her sorrow had neither tears nor speech, yet it was very great.

Between Joconda and herself there had been seldom tenderness, but there had been always love. An immense void had suddenly yawned in her path; an immense loss, that she could ill measure, had fallen on her. She had not been very happy, for life at Santa Tarsilla does not contain many of the elements of happiness; she had always vaguely suffered from the narrowness and stupor of it, from the languor and disease that were around her, and her whole nature