Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/172

164 "Is she there?" he asked a violet domino, who wore, like himself, the badge of silver ivy. "No. Perhaps she will not come, after all!"

"Oh yes, she will." "How do you know? Have you seen her?"

"No, I never saw her. But Conrad has been dining with me, and left me to go and fetch her." The violet domino went on, without a word.

He's in love with her, too; he can't speak of her without a tremor in his voice; and by his voice he is nobody less than Prince Carlo himself," thought Vane, glancing back at his silver ivy, in apprehension lest it should be torn off or stolen in the press. "What can her power be? Ah, bah! What was that of the L'Enclos? Nobody knew, bat nobody resisted."

And he went on, humming to himself Scarron's quatrain:

"Ah! there she is!"

The stifled exclamation fell on his ear, low spoken but impulsively passionate, as only a lover's