Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/213

 and a little handful of honeysuckle was in an earthen mastos standing by; the 'mother of the woods' is the flower that braves longest of all the summer heats.

'Is that her remorse?' thought the bitter-hearted old man, as he bade his men tear up the pieces of broken rock, where soon they found the small body of the little child, wrapped, heedfully, in linen and lying in the buds of rosemary. There was a gold Madonnina buried with it. There were no marks of violence upon it, and some property of the air or rock, not uncommon in this soil, had preserved the little corpse from all corruption and made it look like a pale waxen image.

Even the hard hearts and dull souls of the men were moved to some emotion as they looked on it, lying dead upon its bed of withered rosemary.

'She never harmed it,' they murmured to one another; but their director grew angry and bid them be silent.

'You are idiots,' he said to them. 'She killed it, and hid it here. If she had not killed it, would she have denied it honest Christian burial?'

Angry and disappointed, and inflamed