Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/58

 'Maybe that I am what you think,' she said with some bitterness. 'They call me the Musoncella.'

He let her go without more effort to detain her. She went out amidst the wild olive and myrtle and arbutus, and worked hard in the clear winter air, as the bittern sent his loud love-call over the water of the pool, and the brown partridge flitted from under the rosemary.

As she cut the withered shrubs and made them up in bundles, the tears she would not shed before him fell upon the billhook and the heath, and dimmed for her all the purple shadows of the moors and the sapphire heights of the enclosing mountains.

Where the bittern was calling near at hand, there was a broad sheet of water set within a frame of olive and willow and sedge: a shining steel-grey pond, reflecting on its bosom the shapes of the clouds and the blue of the heavens.

In this pond the bos butor stood sending his long deep call to his mate, stooping his head down into the water and spouting its spray into the air as he uttered his continuous music. The female listened with