Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/151

140 wealth, without a rival in the sovereignty of her beauty and her will. Rich himself in those accidents of power and possession which she owned, he might have pleaded still, on the ground of his wretchedness, against her fiat; but in the pride of his beggared fortunes his lips were sealed to silence; he could not force his love, having no treasure upon earth save that to give, upon the empress of those brilliant revels on which the dawn had lately broken, upon the mistress of those high ambitions which seemed alone to reach her heart; upon a woman so proud, so peerless, so throned in every luxury and every splendour as this woman was. She was not haughtier in her magnificent command than he in his ruined poverty; and in that moment he had not force, nor memory, nor consciousness left to him. He only suffered dumbly and blindly, like a dog struck cruelly by the hand he loves, the hand he would have died in striving to obey.

She looked at him once—only once—and a quick sigh ran through her. Had she saved him from the fangs of the carrion beasts and the talons of the mountain birds, merely to deal him this? Better, she thought, have left him to his fate, to perish in a nameless grave, under the eternal shelter of the watching pines! Yet she did not yield. Without