Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/238

Rh lips. What mattered it—her defiance, her beauty? She was his captive! Nominally the king's captive, virtually his. What mattered resistance? He paused before her, subduing the glow of his thoughts beneath the fall of his silken lashes, long and soft as the lashes of women; and his voice had its sweetest melody.

"Madame de Vassalis, hear me. You have said justly you are a prisoner; in the power of a sovereign yon have conspired against, of a government yon have sought to undermine. To underrate your sway for rebellion and for evil would be absurd; it has been vast, and wrought by the surest spells that subjugate the heart and the soul of man"

Her delicate, merciless smile arrested the words on his lips.

"What do you know of those spells, holy father?"

Though her life was in this man's power, to use as he would, she could not restrain the irony that gave her, the captive, so keen a weapon against her tyrant. A smile for which she could have killed him gleamed under his drooped lids.

"Had I never known them until now, this moment had sufficed to teach them!"

A haughty impatience swept over Idalia's face.

"Sir! I have had my surfeit of such compliments.