Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/65

54 'Dear friend, is it for me to say what new caprice your fair Countess's will may indulge in? Certainly, if one might attribute such a provinciality to the most accomplished woman of her time, I should have said, by the little I saw in Constantinople, that she did feel some sort of tenderness to your Titan of an enemy. At least, she made him win at baccarat, bade me harm him 'at my peril', and spent the hours alone with him in a very poetic manner. Though really I cannot imagine why she should smile on a penniless Queen's Messenger, except by the feminine rule of contradiction!" Lashing him like the separate cords of a scourge, each word fell on his listener's ear. Vane watched his fury with gratified amusement; this thing had been bitter beyond all conception to him, lightly and idly as he purposely spoke of it, and it rejoiced him with a compensating satisfaction to turn its bitterness elsewhere. Furious oaths in half the tongues of Europe chased themselves one after another off the Greek's lips. Vane let this galled and futile passion spend itself in its vain wrath some moments, then he spoke again: "The idea annoys you? Well, certainly he is an inconvenient person to be on the list of her lovers. But what can you do? As for shooting