Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/41

 own knowledge of the blood of Saturnino that ran in her veins, her parentage having been written by Joconda's scribe on a separate page that he had not offered to her. From the dragon had come forth, not indeed a dove, but a white-winged curlew, strong alike on sea and moor.

'But how is her coffin here?' he asked with surprise, after long silence.

She told him how she had brought it there.

He listened with emotion.

'You are as faithful as a dog,' he said; 'it is not southern, such constancy.'

She did not understand; she knew nothing of any divisions and races of men.

'Do you not think she would have wished to be with me?' she said, anxiously.

'I am sure that she would. Who of us all cares to lie alone in the black earth with the worms? You loved her much, it seems?'

'She was good, and I was too thankless. I know it now; now it is of no use.'

'My poor child! We all feel that when we have lost what served us. When my father lay dead before me I seemed to myself to have been a very brute, living all for