Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/132

 For the first time he lost patience, and a fierce oath escaped him.

'You have no more heart than a stone,' he said bitterly, as Este once had said it.

She did not answer, bus took up her creel with the mussels and oysters in it.

'Where do you live?' he said abruptly.

'That I shall not tell you.'

That she dwelt in the tombs never occurred to his thoughts. Saturnino had spoken of the place as a hole in the earth, and he himself had only guessed that from containing gold toys it was some Etruscan burial-place. He had heard of such.

'You will not tell me?' he said in his teeth. 'Then I will find out for myself.'

She did not reply; she thought how the kingfisher blinds and baffles men to where his underground home is made: surely she could do as much as the birds did. Yet a great dread was at her heart; it would be hard to rid herself of this persistent wooer.

At last a thought struck her, and she looked him full in the face.

'What can it matter to you where I live? Leave me in peace. You should be too proud to come where you are undesired. As for the other things that you