!" She dropped her face in her
hands, broken with grief. "He fights," she pursued; "he fights for my
country. I feel his blood--it seems to run from my body as it runs from
his. Not if he is dying--I dare not go to him if he is dying! I am in
chains. I have sworn it for money. See what a different man Merthyr is
from any on earth! Would he shoot himself for a woman? Would he grow
meaner the more he loved her? My hero! my hero! and Tracy, my friend!
what is my grief now? Merthyr is my hero, but I hear him--I hear him
speaking it into my ears with his own lips, that I do not love him. And
it is true. I never should have sold myself for three weary years away
from him, if I had loved him. I know it now it is done. I thought more of
my poor friends and Wilfrid, than of Merthyr, who bleeds for my country!
And he will not spurn me when we meet. Yes, if he lives, he will come to
me gentle as a ghost that has seen God!"

She abandoned herself to weeping. Tracy, in a tender reverence for one
who could speak such solemn matter spontaneously, supported her, and felt
her tears as a rain of flame on his heart.

The nightingales were mute. Not a sound was heard from bough or brake.

CHAPTER LIX

A wreck from the last Lombard revolt landed upon our shores in June. His
right arm was in a sling, and his Italian servant following him, kept
close by his side, with a ready hand, as if fearing that at any moment
the wounded gentleman's steps might fail. There was no public war going
on just then: for which reason he was eyed suspiciously by the rest of
the passengers making their way up the beach; who seemed to entertain an
impression that he had no business at such a moment to be crippled, and
might be put down as one of those foreign fools who stand out for a
trifle as targets to fools a little luckier than themselves. Here, within
our salt girdle, flourishes common sense. We cherish life; we abhor
bloodshed; we have no sympathy with your juvenile points of honour: we
are, in short, a civilized people; and seeing that Success has made us
what we are, we advise other nations to succeed, or be quiet. Of all of
which the gravely-smiling gentleman appeared well aware; for, with an eye
that courted none, and a perfectly calm face, he passed through the
crowd, only once availing himself of his brown-faced Beppo's
spontaneously depressed shoulder when a twinge of pain shooting from his
torn foot took his strength away. While he remained