never see her had passed by his ear unheeded.
That she was not alone he believed, yet since he had heard of the second escape of Saturnino Mastarna he had felt little doubt but that her father had sought her out in the tombs and claimed her shelter by making himself known to her. He did not think her savage pride and her stern self-dependence were compatible with any other secret.
She, who to Este was gentle and soft as the cushat to her mate, by him had been always seen untamable, and shy, and fierce as any one of the dwarf-herons that she defied him to discover by the pools.
On the mountain side above San Lionardo, set well above the miasma and rain mists of the marshes, there was an old castellated place called Præstanella, half villa and half fortress, which from the ninth to the thirteenth century had been a mighty strong-hold, changing hands often in the internecine wars that ravaged the Massa Maritima. Later on it had been less of a fortress, and had taken some of the characteristics of a mountain villa, having terraced gardens made before its machicolated walls and hundreds of acres of wood behind and
