Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/319

 Her footfall was noiseless. He did not know that he was followed; that he had thus been followed all across the wastes of the Maremma.

He passed without a moment's pause through the doorway; whenever he had struck a deathblow, he had always struck quickly as the eagle does.

Within there was a vast and lofty hall, austere with sculpture, its floor mosaic, its ceiling frescoed; a staircase of immense width, made of marble, stretched upward between walls of marble; silver lamps swung from above and lighted it dully. It was deserted and silent; all the footmen dozed in Roman fashion, in the antechambers before the great apartments up above where the first flight of the great stairs ended, and where, in a great arch within the wall, a statue of S. Michael stood, colossal, with white wings outspread and spear uplifted.

Saturnino crossed the hall and mounted one by one the steps of marble.

Once he looked back to be sure that no one saw him there. She shrank against the pillars of the balustrade, and her grey clothes were so like the shadows on her that she escaped his sight.

All around the landing-place there were