Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/243

232 men like foxes, and who menace a captive when she can no longer revenge!" A flush of shame and irritation came on his cheek; he was intolerant, cruel, cunning, an intriguer, a liar, a man of unscrupulous ambition, of intense and overweening pride and vanity; but he was withal a gentleman, and he felt the sting of the rebuke.

"I came—not to menace, but to persuade," he said, restraining the ardour she had roused in him, and bending on her the full lustre of his soft eyes. "My daughter, yon cannot suppose but that it is with the utmost repugnance, and only at the last extremity, that force will be resorted to by those you have so justly incensed against you. Your years, your sex, your brilliance, all render the task of chastisement, the exercise of severity towards you, a most painful duty."

She smiled.

"Neither royalty nor priesthood are likely to suffer much from compunction; and as for the things you name, I take no refuge in the shield of my sex's weakness. I believe few men have merited your hatred and your rigour, or the vengeance of any tyranny, more than I have done." Again she broke his patience, again she rent aside