Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/130

Rh and the play with them; only broken by intervals when hookahs and cool drinks were brought round, and the homage offered to hazard was offered to its beautiful empress. She lost very considerably for a while, but the more she lost the more extravagantly she staked upon the cards; and fortune changed, pouring in on her its successes at length as lavishly as it had previously squandered her gold. So the short sweet night passed away, over the scattered hamlets that crowned the piles of rocks or nestled in sea-grey olive-woods;—passed away in the whirl of gambling, and the bitterness of jealous heart-burning, and the stir of restless passions. Without, where the waters lapped the shore so softly, and the islands hung in the starlit air like sea-birds' nests brooding above the waves, the aged, dying peacefully, dreamt of immortality, and children slept with smiles upon their lips under the low brown eaves of cabin roofs, and the eyes of poets, wakeful and laden with voluptuous thoughts, dwelt, never weary, on the silent sailing clouds, warm with the flush of earliest dawn; but here, within, there was but the fever of unworthy things.

Erceldoune, where he stood apart, glanced once or twice at that fair tranquil neglected night with