Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/216

Rh allusion, I confess; but one must face possible contingencies."

Conrad Phaulcon looked at him one moment with a fierce glare under his curling lashes; but for the bond that bound and the authority that fettered him, he would have tossed up the Northerner's slender frame in his strong lithe arms, and dashed on the marble without those subtle astute brains that baffled and that ruled him. Then he dropped his head as a chidden hound drops his—and went. Alone, his chief sat motionless, his eyes fixed, his arms resting on the table before him, his face white and rigid as though its profile were the profile of a marble bust. He had been bitterly stung, though he had never shown it; he had been deeply moved, though he had given no sign of it. This lawless tiger, this velvet-skinned wild brute, this worthless adventurer, this mountain-thief, who shot men as willingly as he shot sea-birds, had flung off treachery as a villany too black for him; and he—a scholar, a gentleman, a wit, a man who ridiculed the barbaric errors of crime, and who knew that he had in him intellect to compass the statecraft of half a world—had found no issue for his ambitions, no crown to his career, no end for his attainments, except a traitor's shame! No rebuke