Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/246

Rh. Pity can have no place where her holiness is menaced, where her kingdom is denied, where her reign is outraged. True!—even your sex cannot spare you from the chastening that she must, in the fulness of her divine love, bestow on you for the purification of your heresies and your rebellion"

She stayed him with a gesture:—

"Nay, Monsignore! we are not in the Cinque Cento, and you cannot burn me, though yon can slay me more slowly and more cruelly, perhaps. A truce to this melodrame! We are both of the world; let us speak without tragedy. You say the Secular Arm will deal with me for my 'crimes,' why then are you here?"

The direct question staggered him slightly, but Giulio Villaflor was very rarely at fault; he bowed with grace.

"Because I would fain save yon, were it possible, from the fruits of your own misguided recklessness."

"I thought so," she said, calmly, while his eyes fell beneath her smile. "I have said, I betray no one; and I give no bribes." "In gold—no. And I seek none."

He leaned nearer to her, and his voice sank very low; the flush burnt darker in his olive cheek, and his eyes gazed on her beauty with a boldness that