Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/43

32 the sea, Idalia stood; her head was bent, her eyes were grave and filled with thought, and her lips had as much of disdain as of melancholy; she looked a woman to dare much, to reign widely, to submit rarely, to fear never. Yet she was in bondage now.

At a breakfast table, a little distance from her sat Conrad, Count Phaulcon. He was smoking, having finished with the coffee and claret, fruit and fish beside him, and was looking at her under his lashes, a look half wary, half admiring, half angered, half exultant, the look of a man foiled in holding her by intimidation, but successful in holding her by power; yet not wholly at his ease with her, nor wholly so with himself.

"If you would only hear reason," he said, impatiently; he had vanquished her in one sense, but in another she was still his victor, and he was restless under it.

"I am happy to hear reason," she answered coldly, "but of dishonour I am—a little tired!" There was a certain listless satiric bitterness in the last words.

"Dishonour!" echoed Phaulcon, while the blood flushed over his forehead, and he moved irritably. "How strangely you phrase things! What has changed you so? For a woman of the world, a