Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/260

 The women began to shriek more and more loudly; they screamed one against the other. Conscious that proofs were wanting they made up for lack of evidence with storm of noise; they howled aloud that they were honest as the day, and were robbed, they reviled the dead in her grave.

'Proof! She wants proof!' they yelled. 'If we have no proof, or but little, it is because we were too good. We trusted an old lone creature. We let her take our substance and never asked her a quittance. We were too good, too simple, too long-suffering; and now we are cheated at last.'

Musa stood and looked at them; her face was pale and cold as marble, only in her eyes a passion of hatred and of scorn shone as the lightnings would shine at night in the purple skies of the summer.

She bore in silence for a while that hissing steam of angry breath, that harsh shrill uproar of abusive voices, their menacing hands that dashed about her in the air, their glittering eyes, that seemed to dart at her like snakes' tongues in the sunrays. Then, all of a sudden, she stooped, lifted the loosened stone, and took up the pitcher from