Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/174

 will send the best man I have with you wherever you want to go.'

She was silent.

'I will not come with you myself,' he added, 'since you flout and hate me so. But remember what I have said, and I shall see you and say it again.'

She was still silent; she could not bear to owe him a service, but there was something in this generosity of his action which touched her as all his amatory eloquence had had no power to do. She could not endure to use his boat, yet unless she did so she could never reach home that night, and what would Este think of her? What might not happen to him, alone, and feeble, and without food?

As she hesitated, the Sicilian shouted to a sailor on the little isthmus of sand; his own boatswain, a man of years and one to be trusted. The boatswain ran to his call, and Daniello whispered to him. A long slim boat was soon aground against the sand.

'That will take you where you wish to go,' he said, and his large black eyes gazed on her with a reproach that dimmed their fire and light.

She looked at him a certain shame.