Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/95

 everything that was taken out of that fresh free life of the deep sea, and not seldom when she got a chance slipped back from the net into the waves the shining silver of the struggling fish, caught when the moon was high. For which not seldom she got a blow too. For men and women do not like pity that interferes with their livelihood.

'Thou art a strange one!' said Joconda many a time, for the splendid, abundant, daring health and strength of the child seemed strange there, in those pale fever mists, amidst those pallid, inert populations. She was good to the child, but she was afraid of her. The crimes of the Mastarna men seemed to her fancies to hover, like a cloud of guilt, above this innocent head. The blood that coursed so buoyantly in those blue veins was the blood of an assassin and a robber. Joconda could not forget that.

When she looked at the form of the child, leaping naked in the blue waters, she could not but look over to the north where the islands blent with the golden sky, and cross herself as she thought, 'the father is there in chains!'

She was not even sure that the child cared for her; the child seemed to love