With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the
soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.
A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men
had dug.
Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt
from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the
woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married
Olinto. Both had been assassinated!
When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an
expression of surprise. The body was evidently not that of the person
she had expected to find.
"Who is she, I wonder?" my companion ejaculated. "Not a lady, evidently,
by her dress and hands."
"Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my
own counsel. I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife;
of her illness and her longing to return to Italy. Yet the dead woman's
countenance must have been healthy enough in life, although her hands
were rough and hard, showing that she had been doing manual labor.
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