Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/216

 was found by the Prince of Canino—wealth of which he could give his owner a discreet portion, whilst with the rest he would swell that ever-growing hoard which was the sweetest sight his twinkling eyes ever dwelt on; he was wont to feast on it by oil light, when his doors were bolted and barred with locks three hundred years old, in his old grey house set down amidst the marshes and the salt lagoons.

Having at length espied in the darkness the fibula and the few ornaments which Saturnino had overlooked, and which she had once refused to sell even for Este's sake, the sight of these only inflamed his cupidity the more, and made him the surer that there had been some vast treasure seized and sold by her; and this conviction so tormented and enraged him that with his own hands he would have strangled her had it not been that he was timid where the law stepped in and knew he should be punished for doing such rough justice on her.

His gaze roving thus, sullen and eager to discover, fell at last on the coffin of Joconda, where it rested in the twilight behind the stone bier of that Etruscan knight who once had been sole lord there.