Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/50

 active and very hardy; she lived honestly, and in a stern, cleanly fashion that made her village people think her odd and be a little afraid of her. Her sons had died of the marsh fever and her daughter had left her a motherless grandson, a bold fair boy, the lamb that Saturnino had saved ten years before when the boy had gone up with his goats into the mountains; for which mercy Joconda and her lad had blessed him every day and night they told their beads.

But though Saturnino had spared the boy, the fever had not done so; and ever since his death Joconda had dwelt alone with her dead memories. She had been a sad woman always, but she was a strong one. She worked for her living, and owed nobody a bronze piece, and was half respected and half feared, which she liked better than being loved.

Fifty years before she had been brought here from her mountain home fronting the high chain of the Grand Paradis by her husband after a fishing cruise to the seaboard of lower Savoy, and the tradition of her northern birth made her still 'a stranger' to the people of Santa Tarsilla and all the low-lying shore. She had never seen Savoy for