Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/96

 nothing except Leone the dog, and the sea. She had a passion for the winds and the waters, for the open moor, for the free air, and was no more to be kept within doors than a mountain beast or sea-bird would have been; but for human creatures she did not care, and she had none of the caressing, clinging ways of childhood. The thought of her weighed heavily on Joconda; it was a burden to her, night and day.

'Does one suffer for doing good?' she muttered with a sigh to her priest.

'If one did not, where would be the merit of it?' said he.

But Joconda shook her head; the ways of the Saints were hard. Her old age had been already joyless and laborious and bare and meagre. But it had been tranquil, with no heavier care than to get provender for her mule, and bread for her own soup-pot. Now a weary apprehension, an anxious trouble, were with her always.

If the child, like the father, should offend God and man?

She knew nothing of transmitted taint and hereditary influence, but her experience told her that what is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh; and her fears made her see