Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/313

 heroic, virginal, steeped in innocence as the flowers were steeped in the penetrating force of the sunlight, clothed in the impenetrable armour of an absolute ignorance of evil. He had called her Una in his own thoughts as he had gone away from her through the aisles of the evergreen-oaks.

And now

It hurt him like a personal shame, it wounded him as if in his own honour, to find her here in the heart of the earth, side by side with the lover of that murdered Mantuan woman whom angrily to himself he called the hero of a tawdry tragedy.

He remembered that in Mantua that day he had thought the accused prisoner innocent, but now it seemed to him that he must have been in error and the judge and the priest been right. He was a man of noble temper and usually just judgment; but, unconsciously, the finding of Este there had made the Mantuan tale stand out before him in new colour, in strange guiltiness, blood-red as the sunset he had watched over the westward lake.

Nevertheless, guilty or guiltless, he had promised to save him. He had to do so, even whilst at that very hour, no doubt, this