Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/31

20 checked and chilled, vaguely yet irresistibly, as he met her glance. He was rarely to be daunted, still less rarely to be shamed; yet he was both now. He paused involuntarily, his eyes fell, and words died on his lips, as he bowed before her. "And your intelligence?" she asked.

"Intelligence? Caffradali has deserted us."

Idalia lifted her eyebrows.

"He is as well lost as retained. What else?"

"You know that the Ducroscs will send twenty thousand rifles into Poland, and that Falkenstein goes to take the command of the Towaricz?"

She gave a gesture of impatience.

"He will 'command' them when they are organized—when! It was I who sent him. This can scarcely be your intelligence—your intelligence that will not wait till to-morrow?"

He hesitated, with a strangely novel embarrassment upon him.

"I waited—to congratulate you on your conquest of the Prince to the cause."

A light of triumph gave its pride to her eyes, and its warmth to her brow; she smiled, as with the memory of victory.

"Viana! Yes—it is something to have secured him, semi-Bourbon that he is! But I still remain