Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/277

 again. 'What do you do here? Will they not take you if they see you?'

'They shall not see me; I know how to hide. They watch for me in Sardinia. I have been there with mountain men of Mastarna blood. I got away on a good ship: a Sicilian who loves you pitied me.'

She was silent; it was nothing to her. She only wished that he would go away. It was not fear that she felt for him, but apathy; the apathy of a mind which has but one thought, of a heart which has one emotion.

Then she remembered that this man had once sent her Este; her eyes softened.

'Come inside,' she said to him, 'I will give you bread and a little wine that is there; you will be safer within. Come.'

He followed her. He took the food and the drink, but remained standing. His eyes followed her with a pathetic yearning. He was saying always to himself, 'She is mine, she is Serapia's; and all she knows of me is that I stole her gold, and sent to her the coward who has killed her heart in her before she has seen a score of years on earth.'

She served him with the little she possessed, then seated herself with those