Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/225

 which had been enough for her strong health and unpampered appetite, were nothing to tempt the nausea and the languor of a still feeble convalescent. She knew how to do what Joconda had done. If she had had them, she could have prepared the goat's ham, the curd cheese, the broth with wine in it of savoury herbs, but except the herbs she had none of the materials needful for these things; and even for sake of Este she could not bring herself to snare the birds, her dear friends, her cherished playmates, beloved by her before she had seen his face.

This life of the wild moorlands and woodlands had been all-sufficient for her in her simple needs, but the more complicated wants of a man once used to gentle life, and now worn with long languor and weakness, found it utterly barren and empty.

It was a blessing to her that it was autumn, that many a rough fruit and edible fungus could be gathered off the moors, and that the teeming sea was still so near that she could draw from it fish succulent and various. Still, food was hard to obtain, and obtained hardly by the sheer strength of her arm and sureness of her eye; and