Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/81

 father had been sent by his judges to pass his life as a galley-slave on Gorgona.

Joconda feared no scorn and unkindness on the score of her birth for the child, if that birth were known; on the contrary, she feared the vanity and the evil passions that, with the knowledge of the blood of the Mastarna in her veins, might by public sentiment be engendered in her.

She would be the child of a hero, almost of a martyr, in the esteem of Maremma. She would hear no account made of his crimes; she would only hear of his valour; and if she lived she would grow up to think of her father as a sufferer by the law's injustice.

To the cooler, sturdier, northern sense of right and wrong which abode in the mountain-born spirit of the woman of Savoy, this prospect carried a fatal future to give to any child; and she resolved within herself to keep the secret of the baby's paternity from all, save, of course, her confessor. To him she told the truth.

To the rest of the shore people she said merely that it was a friend's child come from over the other side of Monte Labbro, and she, being a close and resolute woman, was