Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/273

Idalia had given no sign of yielding; she had scarcely spoken since the day that Giulio Villaflor had quitted her presence. She knew that the lightest word might be construed into confession, or used as evidence against those whom they wanted her to betray; and she had strength in her to endure torture unflinchingly, without breathing one syllable that should sound as an entreaty for mercy, or be translated into a hint against her comrades in adversity. She knew well what she had to anticipate; she did not seek to palliate to her own thoughts the horror of the doom that awaited her; she knew that only by death, self-dealt, could she escape the passion of the libertine who held her in his gripe; she knew that when that had had its way, and grown sated of its own violence, she would, if she lived, drag out existence in agony, in shame, in felon companionship, in hopeless bondage; she never veiled from herself the depth and the despair of the wretchedness that awaited her, and she knew that not even her sex would shelter her from the barbarity of physical torture, till that torture should kill her bodily strength, or her persecutors learn that it was powerless to destroy her resolve and break her silence. She knew the fate that awaited her, but never for one instant did the thought glance