Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/26

 another, awed by her anger, which they could not comprehend, and dazzled by her beauty.

'Get you gone, or the dog shall tear you!' she said, with a passion that was the more intense because restrained. 'The place is mine. I am here with my dead. Get you gone!'

'Let us go,' said the men to each other, and they did go, slowly, and looking back at her, and doubting still whether she were mortal, and, if mortal, mad.

'Mad, surely!' they said one to the other, and one of them added:

'It is best to humour her. But we will go back again. She is beautiful. It must be she who owns the spinning wheel and the guitar.'

Left to herself she sat quite still, and hot tears gushed into her eyes.

'Zirlo, Zirlo!' she repeated. 'And I loved him!'

There is no knife that cuts so sharply, and with such poisoned blade, as treachery.

Time went over her head uncounted. She sat there, lost in the intense pain that consumed her at this her first taste of