Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/27

Rh years, rather under the middle size and slightly built; in his bearing easy and aristocratic, in feature although not by any means handsome, very attractive, with blue eyes that were always smiling with pleasant sunshine, hair of the lightest hoe that glanced like silk, and a mouth as delicate as a woman's, that would have made him almost effeminate but for the long amber moustaches that shaded it, while his face, though very fair, was perfectly colourless, which lent to it the delicacy, but also the coldness, of marble.

As the two men sat together—host and guest—antagonism seemed more likely between them than alliance; and in such antagonism, if it arose, it would have been hard to say which would be the victor. In a fair and open fight, hand to hand, the blood of the Northern Countrie would be sure of conquest, and Erceldoune would gain with the same ease and the same strength as that with which those in whose veins it had run before him had charged "through and through a stand of pikes," and stood the shock of the English lances; but in a combat of finesse, in a duel of intrigue, where the hands were tied from a bold stroke, and all the intricate moves were made in the dark, it would be a thousand to one that the bright and delicate