Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/305

 Their plan was to come some dozen in force and plunder the tombs, and treat the dweller there better or worse, according as she yielded to them or resisted.

'She will resist,' Zefferino's father had said with a laugh, 'and then—well, there are dead there already; and who will know?'

Then the minds of the men had inflamed themselves with mad hopes of uncountable treasure and unearthly beauty.

'They do say she is the daughter of Lucifero,' they had muttered one to another.

So much he had heard; passing by unseen in his grey clothes amongst the grey tangle of leafless branches and tall-growing rosemary.

He now moved into one of the inner cells all the traces of her residence there, the lute, the candelabra, the handsome bronze vessels, the look of which might tempt the San Lionardo men to plunder; then, with the lamp burning but the fire extinguished, he sat down and waited for them, and rested his eyes whilst he did so on the clay busts that wore the likeness of Musa.

'He has been here long,' he thought.