Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/39

28 She drew the laces from him, and moved away.

"You have as much belief in the name you invoke, monsieur, as I have in the love for which you invoke it! Come! we alike know the world too well for this comedietta not to weary both. You must end it, or I."

"No!—hear me out," he said, fiercely, almost savagely, for one whose impassive gentleness had commonly been his choicest mask and weapon. "Think twice before you refuse any toleration to my love. Take that, and you shall make me your slave; refuse it, and you will never have had a foe such as you shall find in me. Remember—you cannot brave me lightly, you cannot undo the links that connect us, you cannot wash out my knowledge of all that you have held most secret. Remember whose thoughts and acts and intrigues I have in my keeping. I know that you would give all your loveliness in tribute to me to bribe me from uttering to the world"

"You try intimidation? I accredited you with better breeding and less melodrama," said Idalia, her careless negligence unruffled, as with a bow like that with which queens dismiss their courts, she passed from the chamber ere he could follow or arrest her;—it would have been a man bolder and