Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/263

 steps he overtook her and spoke in her ear.

'It was the Mantuan noble that you loved?'

She turned her head with a quick, frightened anger, but in the warmth that mounted over the pallor of her face, in the look of her dilating eyes, he knew the truth.

She could not lie, she would not speak; with that one swift glance over her shoulder, she shook him off, and hastened on. He had been answered.

He let her go once more onward and northward towards the moors, alone.

She had escaped the horror of years of an imprisoned life only through him; but that she did not know, and he would not have her told of it.

'She would be angry with me,' he thought in his humility; the humility which is the sign of all great love. He knew besides how intolerable it would be to her to learn that he had spent money in her defence which she could never hope to be able to repay to him.

He stood motionless, looking after her as long as she was in sight.

When a curve in the land took her from