Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/263

 'They will not be angered against me, nor will they speak ill of her,' she thought; and led the mule straight onward to the place she loved, where the tall leafy cork-trees rose up from the thickets, and the white-flowered cistus-bushes, and the hawthorns and the myrtles, and the yellow-blossoming Christ's-thorn covered the burial-place of the Etruscan dead.

Intense heat still brooded over all the land, but she was used to it; it did not harm her.

For miles around there was nothing visible; not a sail in the distant sea, not a bird in the air, not a boar in the brakes, not a snake in the sand.

She led the old mule, and paced beside him; her heart was like a stone, her feet felt like lead; all at once she realised all that the faithful, kindly, fostering love of Joconda had been to her, and knew that it was gone from her for ever.

She went on with the animal through the hot white light, their shadows lying black behind them on the scorched grass and the grey sand. An immense sorrow had entered into her, and an immense regret. She thought—'I was never thankful!'