Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/307

 weighed on her. She was unconsciously happy in the air, in the liberty, in the delightful sense of healthful and untrammelled life.

Her mind busied itself with its own vague imaginations, and her mode of life was filled with that sombre mystery which she loved as the Etruscan race had loved it. If she had been shut in the garret or the factory-room of a city, this temper would have become morbid and dangerous in her; but, braced by the daily physical labours of her life, and by the abundant and vigorous exercise of all her bodily powers, it only served to give a solace, and a sort of sublimity, to a fate which would have seemed to many hard and friendless. The moorlands and the moorland sepulchres were made for her and she for them.

The visits of little Zefferino kept her from that absolute solitude which in time hurts the mind and distorts it. He was a very human little thing; greedy, playful, timid, kindly when it cost him nothing, most kindly when he gained most by it; a complete little epitome of humanity clothed in shaggy goat's hair.

She grew fond of the child, and was in-