Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/199

188 resisted their sway, but let them burn out his strength and consume his intellect as they would. There were times when he shook opiates into his wines with a hand that recked little whether it shook too little or too much, and would have poured out a death-dose without a tremor; times when ambition seemed worthless as autumn leaves, and he loathed life because life could never yield to him the beauty of one woman. All who once loved Idalia drank of a mandragora that left them little of their natures, nothing of their wisdom. Even he had no antidote against it, but let it steal away his brain and pour its fire through his limbs till the soft courtier grew a brute, till the subtle politician became a fool, till the gentleman turned a traitor.

A sound in one of the many chambers leading off from the terrace-room in which he was, roused him. He was still too much governed by long habit and discipline not to recover himself instantly. Whatever he felt was only given way to in loneliness; no looker-on could see any change in his delicate, immutable face, in his soft calm smile, in his easy velvet indolence; he would have profited little by his long study of the world if he could not have held his own in finesse to the last.

Into the apartment, with little ceremony and no