Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/246

238 Victor Vane, with a significance in the tone that did not lie in the words.

A certain contempt came into her eyes and a slight flush on her cheeks.

"My fancies, at least, remain patrician: a woman is never compelled to be consistent," she said, with a negligent indifference.

Yet no physiognomist who had studied the proud curve of her beautiful lips, or the firm mould of her delicate chin, would have said that inconsistency, or any need to take refuge in it, could ever be attributed to the Countess Vassalis, whatever other errors might lie at her score. "What can that man be to her?" thought Erceldoune, while the dark colour flushed over his brow. Vane had not been named as any relative: there was no difference in her manner to him from her conduct to others, yet he had about him a nameless familiarity, graceful and polished like all his actions, which seemed to betoken in him either some sway over her or some accepted tie to her. Could he be her lover?—her husband? The blood grew like ice in Erceldoune's veins as the thought glanced across him. He felt dizzy, blinded, sick at heart, and drank down unconsciously the great goblet glass beside him