Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/135

 suspicious of her. Yet, had he known it, she watched for him as the stork watches sleepless on tower or tree-top by its wounded mate.

What she feared most was Zirlo. He had sold her secret, and he would, if he could, sell this fugitive; of that she was sure. Every hour her eyes searched the thickets and the hollows for the form of the faithless little goat-herd; but she never saw him. He had been too terrified to venture near the tombs.

From Zirlo she was safe, But it was now autumn; shepherds, hunters, travellers came at times across the moors. Any moment the white cone of the wood smoke might be seen by some passer-by; any moment some one might ask her what she did there under the thick marucca scrub.

She was for ever alarmed and on the watch, like the wild partridges that sleep in their circle, back to back, ready for instantaneous flight at any second.

The very shadows cast across the plains by moving clouds made her heart throb more quickly. When the long dark line of a string of animals, or waggons, crawled across the horizon, small in the distance as a line of ants, she held her breath in terror