Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/43

 at his hands by the jealous husband; that they had been so readily deceived by the affected grief cf her lord and by the marble mausoleum that he had built to her.

'Why should I have killed her? She loved me always. Him she betrayed for me, he had said again and again to his counsel in Mantua. But none would see it so; even his counsel, affecting to believe, had doubted, and had seen a young lover's jealousy, rather than an aged husband's vengeance, in that wound by the three-edged dagger.

He could not now credit the promise of the stranger to strive for a justice to him that his native city had denied to him; yet the mere fancy of it moved him to a fitful longing and despair that were as a fever to him. One man believed him: that was so much!

As the oil lamp burning at night upon the slab of nenfro only made blacker the dense gloom all around, so this promise, which he disbelieved in, yet shed a ray of hope against hope upon him which only made the darkness and emptiness of his imprisoned life seem worse to him.