Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/196

Rh —to know that what was beyond his reach, what he sought vainly, what he desired unavailingly, would be scourged, and defaced, and insulted, and shut out from all place on the earth. And yet, though he had given her up to her suffering, and would not, had he owned the power now, have released her from one pang of it, he suffered himself—suffered a torture not less than that to which he had delivered her. He knew the doom that would be hers under the revenge of a Church and a State so bitterly incensed against her; he knew that the net which had enclosed her would never unloose to let her issue with her life; he knew that if she ever came forth from the captivity into which he had betrayed her, it would only be when bondage, and stripes, and the companionship of infamy, and the approach of age, would leave no trace on her of all which she once had been; he knew—for against them all his hatred had been borne and his skill arrayed—the full meaning of the tyrannies of Bourbon and of Rome: and there were times when his passion endured agonies at the memory of the scourge that would cut the fairness of her skin, of the rough hands that would unveil her beauty, of the gaol-ruffians who would strip the delicate raiment off her limbs, of the villanous glances that would gloat unchecked on her fallen