Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/54

Rh "Either, wiih pleasure, if you will giye me two answers. First, will you break your oath?" The look that gave so much of heroism and of grandeur to her beauty passed across it; to stoop to supplication to him would have been as utterly impossible to her as to have put down her neck beneath his heel, and though she could not break his bonds, she was not vanquished by him. She answered with a calm endurance that obeyed, not him, but the law of her own nature: "No."

"Ah, that is well and wise, ma belle. Now for the other question. Yon will give me the money?"

"No."

The reply was precisely the same as it had been before: the triumph in his eyes fell.

"And why not?"

"Because every sum I gave you now would seem given because I feared you. Fall as low as that, yon know well enough that I shall never do. As far as you hold me by my oath, so far I will hold myself bouid, no farther; for the rest I have said—all is cancelled henceforward between us.

"What? Do yon mean that you deny my title