Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/84

76 blade flash in the air. She flew on in their wake, but they dived and dipped beneath the thick oak scrub; she lost them as the gazehound loses its quarry. She threw herself beside the body of the dog, and the green earth and the blue sky seemed to her to grow red as if soaked in his blood.

He had been her playfellow and her protector for so many years. At night she had slept safely, knowing him near; from infancy, when her baby's hand had closed on his white curls, he had been her comrade, her companion, her keeper, and of later years, in her sorrows and her solitude, he had given her all the tender and comprehensive sympathy which the dog so willingly gives, so rarely receives in return.

And now his life was gone out in her defence; never again would his frank brown eyes seek sunshine in her smile.

He lay stone-dead in a pool of his own blood that crimsoned the white bells of the bindweed; and his murderers had escaped and were lost for ever in the wide waste of Maremma. She could not weep, she could not cry out; she took his poor shattered head in her hands and kissed it. If she