Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/296

 For three days she kept him in sight often enough to be able to follow in his track. For three nights, when he crept within some hut that he had made for as a shelter, she wrapped herself in her woollen mantle, and rested amongst the leaves hard by, and slept fitfully the deep dreamless sleep of great bodily fatigue.

It was late in autumn; it was not certain death to pass the night abroad as it was in summer seasons. Cool winds from the north had swept away the noxious gases of the canicular heats; there were damp and cold to dread, but the malaria had in a great measure gone with the past summer. Moreover, her nerves were at that tension, her mind was in that overwrought anxiety, in which women, through all ages of the world, have performed miracles and passed through physical dangers of all kinds without physical harm.

There was always with her the dread lest at any moment he should see her and take her for a spy upon him, and slit her throat with his knife as he had once bade Este do. There was the dread, also, lest at any moment, from the inequalities of the ground and the impos-