"Perhaps it was as well for you that you didn't marry her," I remarked. "She must have been a heartless coquette."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"If our love came from our head, that would be very good consolation. I wish messieurs a very good night," he added, bowing. Then he turned somewhat abruptly upon his heel and walked away to his tent.
One by one the men around us left the central group, and, curling themselves up in their cloaks, threw themselves down to sleep—some inside their tents, some on the threshold, and others where they had been sitting. The golden moon had risen high above the gleaming, sparkling surface of the still sea and shone down upon the strange little scene with a full, soft light. I looked round at the slumbering forms of the brigands in the fantastic dress, and at the dark cypress-trees which stood out in strange shapes against the clear, star-bespangled sky. I watched the fire-flies around the aloe hedge, until my eyes ached with following their erratic course. Then I thought of Maud—wondered whether she was at that moment waltzing with Lord Annerley in some heated London ballroom, wondered whether she ever thought of me, whether she knew that I loved her!
And then I closed my eyes, and the sweet, intoxicating perfume which floated about on the heavy southern air lulled me to sleep.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AT PALERMO
For a whole week I shared my father's abode in company with this band of robbers, and then, finding me indomitable in my determination to remain with him, he made another proposition. Such a retreat and such company as we were amongst was all very well for him, an outcast from the world; but for me it was different. He did not like the thought of my dwelling amongst proscribed men; there was no necessity for it.
At first I laughed at him. Monsieur José and I were the best of friends, and though with the other men I could not exchange even a casual remark, for their only language was a vile, unintelligible patois, they were all civil enough, and seemed disposed to be friendly. The wild, open life suited me exactly, especially in the mood in which I then was, and I had no wish to change it for any more luxurious method of living. But as my father seemed to have made up his mind upon the matter, I, of course, had little to say about it.
We did not have much difficulty in finding a suitable abode. At the foot of the wild gorge which gives access to the mountains amongst which the convent of San Martino and the Cathedral of Monreale lie hidden, we came across a tumble-down, half-ruined, grey villa, of which several of the rooms were fairly habitable. We took it from its owner, a neighbouring farmer, for a sum which seemed to us ridiculously low. Then, from the little village of Bocca di Falco, we engaged, for wages little above their keep, a man and woman, and with the remainder of the old furniture which was in the place, and a very few additions from Palermo, we were fairly set up in housekeeping.