Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/323

 'You too!' cried Este; and all his debt, and all his sins of oblivion and ingratitude, came back upon him like a rain of curses, and held him dumb and paralysed.

'I would not have come,' she murmured, careless that the blood was streaming from the hand with which she had seized the dagger, and still clenched it close; 'I would not have come—oh never, never—but he meant to kill you, and I have followed him all the way, all the way.'

Then she dropped senseless on the marble floor at his feet.

Saturnino stood silent, leaning against the columns of the door.

The veins of his throat and his forehead were black and swollen, his dark face was crimson, the blood was surging in his temples and in his brain; he only saw a crimson reeling mist that circled round and round him; the servants seized him and he felt them not; he saw nothing, he knew nothing; only one memory remained with him.

'She was the child of Serapia,' he muttered, 'and you—you—you—you will escape me!'

He strove to wrench himself free from the grasp of the men who held him; he