Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/295

Rh an hour or so ago. I wonder you did not meet him."

"No; I saw nothing of him. The Moldavian bullet did him good service, since it has won him so much of your interest. He should be vastly indebted to it!"

She laughed a little. "Surely, a shot in the lungs is not so very pleasant a matter that a man need be grateful for it." "Are there not many who risked shots far more mortal than this in the mere hope to win what they never did, but he does—your pity?" She shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly.

"Why should you imagine I pity him? Have you not seen him here?"

The emphasis spoke more than volumes could have done. Her companion bowed his head. "True! The real mercy would have been—exclusion! Yet pity him you do, miladi, since you bade me 'harm him at my peril!'"

She looked at him such a curiously fixed regard, that had a hundred meanings in it.

"Let us make an end of this fencing," she said, quietly. "There are none here to dupe. We can speak frankly. We have done this man