Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/65

 Serapia had been but a name—a legend—to the dwellers of the shore and plains.

Wild tales were always told of how Saturnino had ravished her from her people; people beggared though of noble blood, who dwelt on a wind-swept spur of the Sabine hills, by whom she was cursed, and looked on as one dead.

A beautiful, ignorant, mindless thing she had ever been; foolish and passionate from the hour that she had been borne away, a second Proserpine, to the night of oblivion, peril, and crime in which her brute-lover dwelt. One short year only she had been carried, half a captive, half a willing mistress, to that topmost haunt of the hills where all that Saturnino knew as home was made. There she had died; some said of fever, some said of a blow from Saturnino; anyway she had died, and had been buried where the tall stone pines rose up like columns of a temple against the marble of the porches. And her child was here, asleep amidst a scene of carnage made more horrible by the dreaming smile of a baby's rest.

In the cabin there were loose coins, gold, and jewels, dropped and stamped on as they had been caught up in the haste of