Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/231

220 captivity, and knew that endless imprisonment, if not the shame and labour of some still more humiliating torture, would be her doom, but no throb of pity was in her for herself; the only thought upon her was the thought of those whom she told herself that she had murdered.

The bolts of the cell were undrawn with a slow grating sound; she turned and faced the door; it opened, and Giulio Villaflor entered the chamber. The ruddy flame-like light just fading in the west was shed full upon her; the masque dress she had worn had not been changed, and the diamonds on it flashed amidst its scarlet, its black, and its gold; in her weary musings she had thrust back from her temples the masses of her diamond-crowned hair, and, though her face was very colourless and her eyes heavily circled, she had never looked more magnificent than she looked now, as she turned with an empress's challenge.

Villaflor, entering with the courtly step of his habitual grace, started and paused, with a soft oath murmured involuntarily in his surprise and his admiration. He had seen her in Paris, in Spain, in Vienna; but in that instant her loveliness literally struck him blind; he came to arraign a captive, and a queen faced him in haughty and