Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/213

202 would set the mouth of a pistol against my own head before my lips had time to dishonour me!" In the moment he was true; in the moment the one higher thing in his nature asserted its domination; with all his falsity, his guilt, his ruthlessness, his baseness—and these were very black—he was loyal to an idea, he was faithful to a bond. He would betray others without a scruple, but he would not turn a traitor to his cause; he had so much still left of affinity with the codes and the freedom that he ostensibly served. It went far to redeem him, all warped and erring though it was—went far to raise him above the higher intelligence and the finer subtlety of the man who tempted him. Vane heard him with an acrid wrath; this madman, this tool, this wax in his hands, this guilt-stained adventurer, whom he thought no more of than he thought of any pistol that he could use as he would, full of danger to others but to him a mere toy of wood and of steel, shamed him, stung him» escaped from him. What Conrad Phaulcon shrank from as too foul to stoop to must be foul indeed!

"I congratulate you on your new nobility, mon cher," he said, indolently, with that covert sneer which the Greek had learned to dread as a hound dreads the lash. "I did not know there was