Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/79

 men dwelt not at Santa Tarsilla itself, but in a tower on the coast a mile away.

Nothing could be sadder than this place, or seem more forgotten of God and man.

Joconda sometimes, sitting at her door in the heavy parching summer heats, thought with a dull agony of remembrance of the mountain home of her birth.

In these unhealthy places of Maremma, where no one ever stays who can get away, and nearly all who remain are ague-stricken and fever-worn, young children not seldom thrive well enough. The poisoned air, so hot, so damp, so laden with seeds of disease, seems to have mercy sometimes on these young open lips, and bare, soft, uncertain limbs, and in six years' time from the capture of the brigand of Santa Fiora, there was the lithe figure of a beautiful child, bright as a rose, erect as a palm, on the pallid sands under the sultry skies.

This child that was Saturnino's throve, and grew without ailment, without accident, without a flaw anywhere, in feature, or limb, or body.

When Joconda had come down the hills with the weight of Saturnmo's legacy in her arms, she had pondered long and anxiously