Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/18

 A smile lightened all her face, her mouth trembled, her heart heaved.

'I did tell you truthfully,' she murmured, 'because it was yours to judge. But it was hard to do it—ah! very hard.'

He looked at her with a quick glance.

'Why will you always say you do not love me!' he cried, with a little laugh of gladness and of triumph; the first laugh that had left his lips since his mistress had died in Mantua.

A shadow came back over her face.

'I never said it,' she answered him. 'Only I cannot be what she was to you. She is still there. What is death that it should give us leave to be unfaithful? The dead are but gone before'

'You need not think of her!' he answered angrily. 'She would not have troubled her soul for you unless she had killed you as her lord killed her!'

She was silent. Her instincts were all true, but to reason on them was beyond her.

'I am tired,' she said at length. 'I am very tired. I want to rest and sleep. In the morning I must go up to the mountains and tell him that you stay: am I to take his weapons?'