Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/230

Rh beat, and have flung it to the kites that hovered in the dusky glow of twilight as the vilest, darkest, most accursed thing that ever beat with life. She had the coldness of the world, and the pitiless serenity of one long used to study strong emotions only as tools to power; but beneath her acquired calm and cynic indifference the fervency of southern nations still slept in her, and she loathed herself with the fierce unsparing hatred with which men hate their direst foe.

She did herself injustice in much, and loaded herself with heavier reproach than that which had a right to rest on her; but it is ever thus with natures strong, bold, imperial, and used to command, when from the exercise of unmerciful dominion they change to the lash of self-rebuke and self-detestation; as kings in monastic days laid down the sceptre and took up the scourge. Of her own fate she scarce took a thought; she knew well enough that little mercy would mingle with it; but all her heart, all her mind, all her longing, were with those dead men who had perished for her, those noble and dauntless lives which had been struck down around her as though they had been murrained sheep. In her youth, in her beauty, in her wealth, in her supremacy, she was flung into