Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/21

10 her lips. What were they, what title could they claim to her, these men, who seemed so welcome to her? Something in the familiaríty, the authority, of the Englishman's action, slight though it was, bore to him a terrible significance; were her revelríes such as those for which the rose was hung above the doors of Rome?—were they the reveries of a Faustina? The thought passed over him, cold, gliding, poisonous as the coil of a snake; he flung it from him with fierce loathing, true to the motto of his old race: "One loyalty, one faith"—he had given both to her. He heeded neither time nor place; purpose he had none in staying there; to watch her life with suspicion or espionage was the last thought in him, the last baseness possible to him; but he could not tear himself from the place, he was fascinated to it, even by the very torment of his pain. How utterly she must have forgotten him!—how utterly careless must she be of what suffering she had dealt him! As he thought of the look that he had seen on her face, as he thought of those men gathered about her whilst he was absent, he paced the narrow rocky rídge like a man chained to his cell, while his foes ríot in all that he has loved and treasured. And the closed casements faced him like an inexorable doom, while a faint glimmer of