Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/94

 watch her lover's boat glide towards her in the moonlight.

'Do you still believe in Romeo?' said with a smile the Abbate he had spoken to on the evening after the trial, recognising him once as they paced side by side over the drawbridge.

'I believe him to have been guiltless of that crime,' Sanctis answered gravely.

'Mantua condemned him, and Mantua knew him,' said the Abbate; 'you did not.'

Sanctis was silent.

'And the husband?' he said abruptly. 'What has Mantua to say of him?'

'A pious man,' said the priest, 'and a forgiving one. Donna Aloysia was notoriously unfaithful, yet he has built her a fair tomb all of marble, and with a silver ever-burning lamp above it; and every day—every day, mark you!—masses are said for her soul at his cost in S. Andrea.'

'No doubt a most holy man,' said his hearer assenting; and leaned over the parapet and looked at the sun setting in crimson glory beyond the leagues of bulrushes and the grey placid waters.

'Why should I try to do him this good?' he thought. 'Mantua knew him and Mantua