Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/249

238 and evil of his own heart, that spoke out so mercilessly the meaning of his veiled words, of his hinted tempting! She had dared him, she had refused him, she had unmasked him—well, she should know of what fashion was the vengeance of Neapolitan blood, of ecclesiastical dominion! He bent to her, his lips close to her hair, his eyes looking into hers, his brown smooth cheek darkly stained with the purple flush of passions which nothing but that calm scorn of her fixed gaze, which never left him, which never drooped beneath the fierce menace of his own, held in any check.

"Madame de Vassalis, yon might have given your beauty for your freedom and your wealth; you have refused. So be it! It is in my power without terms or concession. You might have reigned my mistress. You shall be now, instead, my toy for an hour, and languish, later, till the grave, in the king's prisons or the galley's shame. You were unwise, my brilliant revolutionist, to make a foe of me; you are mine, body and soul, in life and in death—mine to take when I will, to give where I choose!" And, with these words, he flung his violet robe closer about him, and, without a glance at her where she stood, swept across the stone floor of the