Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/153

 The world was gained for him; but he was lost for her.

He would go away!

That was the one thought standing out from the blackness which seemed to have fallen over her like a veil flung by some unseen hand.

Then, quick as a snake darts out of its hole in the ground, another thought crossed and supplanted that one. She remembered that unless she told him he would never know.

Not a soul but herself and Maurice Sanctis knew that he lived. Not a tongue save theirs could tell of his hiding-place. Not a living creature would he ever dare to accost; no human eyes would ever behold him.

With the instinctive concealment of her race, which is in the Latin temper side by side with so much fire and fury, she turned from the wall with no evidence of any emotion on her face or in her voice.

'The law makes blunders, and people suffer them,' she said simply to Andreino, who shrugged his shoulders despairingly.

'They say the law is never wrong,' he answered, 'but were I that young man, I