Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/125

114 "And this foreigner; has he your pass, madame?" asked Viana, softly bending his head. "He is not one of us, but he is my friend."

"Your friend, madame!" said Viana, with a certain smile that Erceldoune caught; and for which, though he could hear no words accompanying it, he could have tossed the Tuscan prince into the sea sounding below the cliffs. "A fair title, truly: but one with which none, I think, ever rest content!" Viana said no more on the subject, but Erceldoune saw that, as in Turkey, so also in this larger gathering, his presence was unwelcome, and imposed a restraint on her guests, though not apparently on her. He was a curb put on them, and they bore it with chafing impatience, deepened in many of them by a jealous, surprised intolerance of this foreigner, with whom their hostess had entered the salons.

He himself sat in almost unbroken silence, eating little, drinking unconsciously much more than his wont. His thoughts whirled; he felt a fierce, reasonless hatred for all the men by whom he was surrounded. He saw her, through the haze of light and perfume and wine-odours and incense; he felt giddy, maddened, reckless; the fiercest jealousy was at riot in him, and the spiritual beauty of the earlier