Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/211

 shade, and drink their wine, and sleep the noontide sleep they loved.

Their steward eyed her with a more evil glance. He had long sucked all the best juices out of his lord's properties himself; he was bitterly chagrined that he had missed such treasure-trove as Etruscan tombs unopened yield; he made no doubt that she had stolen all the gold.

He had ridden over this moor in spring twelve months before. Why, he thought, had not his horse's hoofs broken through the crumbling sandstone, the thick soft moss, and shown him this kingdom of the dead? He was angry at his own negligence, and hated her since she, he never doubted, had rifled all the place and now they would find nothing; so he grumbled to his peasants, who were still at work with spade and hatchet, being still ignorant of where the entrance was.

She, bound as they had bound her, lay upon the sward and watched them, mute.

'If you will spare our labour and tell me where the entrance is we will set you free,' they said to her; but she did not unclose her lips.

The calm under torment that the