Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/19

8 her face was lighted with impassioned warmth, while her eyes, fixed upon the man nearest her, an Italian by the contour of his features, and of a careless princely bearing, that gave him greater distinction than the rest displayed, adjured him more eloquently still, than by the words with which her lips were moving.

The echo of her voice, though not the meaning of her speech, came to Erceldoune where he swung forward over the chasm in the hushed night, sweet and fatal as the Syren voices that had used to echo over those eternal seas that lapped the beach below. And as he heard it, a heart-sick misery seemed to make his life desolate; he had shaped no definite hope, his thoughts had known no actual form, but his love unconsciously had coloured both hope and thought: she so utterly filled his own life, he could not at once realise that he was nothing, not even a remembrance in hers.

He leaned nearer and nearer, regardless of the unfathomed precipice that yawned beneath him. At that instant Victor Vane rose, pushed back his chair, and approached the open glass doors; looking out from the brightly-lighted room, he could see the shadow of the man and horse upon the opposite ledge.