Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/312

 glowed on the lagoons and bridges, and on the Lombard walls, and Gothic gables, and high bell-towers, and ducal palaces, and feudal fortresses of the city in whose street Crichton fell to the hired steel of bravoes.

'The man is innocent,' he had said that night in Mantua; and now once more he had looked upon him, and his innocence seemed no longer to him clear as then.

The priest, no doubt, he mused now, knew better than he, a prior of Mantua as he was, and able to judge aright the lover of Donna Aloysia.

To live here, sheltering himself by ruin to the one who aided him; to live here, defended by a girl's love, maintained by a girl's labours;—was this not as guilty a thing as to have struck the dagger through the lilies at that Mantuan woman's breast? And baser, perhaps, because less bold than that. To Sanctis it seemed so, at the least, in this first hour of overwhelming surprise, of extreme bitterness, of intense disappointment and chagrin. To him the savage purity of her life had been sacred; he had believed in it undoubtingly. To him she had been a vestal, a dryad, Penthesilea, Maia, Britomart, everything strong, pure,