Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/27

 He glanced at her, and ground his teeth together with a short, sharp sigh.

What was the use of words?

They would stir her no more than the spray of the sea stirred in a thousand years the stones of the colossal walls of the Pelasgians along the coast.

He turned away his face, and leaned his arms for a moment on the marble table where the manuscripts and documents were, and rested his head upon them. He was struggling with himself to repress what it rose to his lips to utter. He was tempted for the moment to the cruelty that would have said to her—'You are the daughter of Saturnino Mastarna.'

Soon he recovered his self-control, and his resolve was taken. He drew a sheet of paper that lay on a table near, wrote a few lines upon it, folded the paper and sealed it.

'Give that to him,' he said to her.

'You need not have closed it,' she said with a little scorn. 'I should not have read it; it is not for me.'

The stern teaching of Joconda, blending with the wayward honour that she inherited from a race whose boast it had ever been that they never broke a promise though