Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/23

 'Come up to the house with me a moment,' he said at last. 'I wish to write a word to him; and you need rest and food.'

'I will not eat your bread. You speak ill of him; you call him a coward.'

'And you? Can you say he is not?'

Her face crimsoned with a more painful shame than she would have felt at any fault or folly cast to her own share.

'He is hunted,' she said sadly, 'and he has been accused of crime whilst he is guiltless. Who would be brave that must needs fly and hide, and fear every breath of the wind that blows? The heron and the hawk are both brave, yet they flee away.'

'Come up to the house,' he said to her, seeing that all speech was useless. They went up the steep grass path under the gnarled boughs of the old olive trees, and left the pistols lying on the turf.

'Eat and rest,' he said to her as they reached the marble court and corridor. He had wine and food ready for her, but she refused both.

'I brought some bread with me, and I drank at a spring; that is all I want,' she said, and was steady in her refusal. He was a friend to her, but he was a foe to