Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/99

88 myself?—how could I know what depths of vileness were in him?"

The dog before her, lying like a lion at rest, with his muzzle down, lifted bis head with a loud bay of wrath, and a snarling growl of menace and defiance: he heard the footsteps of Count Conrad passing downward on the other side of the villa towards the beach, and he hated him with all a hound's unforgiving intensity; once, months before, Phaulcon had been so incautious, in a fit of passion, as to strike the stately Servian monarch, and, but for Idalia, would have been torn in pieces for the indignity. Sulla had never pardoned it. His mistress laid her hand upon his neck, and her teeth set slightly, while her splendid head was lifted with a haughty action that followed the colour of her thoughts.

"Let him be, Sulla. The man who is false is beneath rebuke or revenge!"

And to those who should have known her rightly that proud contempt would have been more than any vengeance she could have given. She sat there many moments—moments that rolled on till they grew more than hours; her eyes watching the boats tjat passed and repassed below in the Capriote waters, her thoughts far from the scene around her.