The State offered a large reward in money to any one who should aid in the discovery and apprehension of the Count Luitbrand d'Este, escaped from the prisons of Gorgona fifteen months before.
The proclamation had been pasted up, and torn down, or defaced, and put up again, some hundred times since the summer night when the galley-slaves had dropped off the rocks into the deep water and swum for their lives, with the musket-balls raining around them and hissing in the sea.
The people of the Orbetellano had more sympathy with the fugitives than with the authorities, and thought that the young man was hardly dealt with: 'Poor lad! It was only a love murder,' they said pityingly. 'After all, if you are jealous and stab your dama, you do what is but natural. Does not the stork kill the faithless mate? So they say."
She read it; but she had self-control enough to let no emotion betray her; side by side with strong passions in her went strong self-command and power of silence.
'I should think,' she said indifferently, turning to Febo, 'that they might be pretty sure that the marshes have killed this poor youth.
