Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/103

92 the hand that lay in his contracted as though it grasped a weapon wherewith to requite a deadly, endless wrong.

"So far I was sinned against," she went on, with effort, as though the memoríes which arose stifled her with poisonous fumes. "But in all else the evil is mine. The sway was guilty that had been put into my hands, but I grew to love it as we grow to love the opium that we hate at first. All power had irresistible fascination for me, and I learned to use mine pitilessly; and I should use it so tomorrow to all save you. The political career into which I had been plunged had its sorcery for me; I delighted in it even whilst I abhorred it. I soon learnt how to play on men's passions until from them I gained what I would. If my instruments were broken under my hands, I never heeded it; they had served my end, and the end was great still, though its means were accursed; the end was still the liberties of the nations. The truth did not come to me till I had gone too far to draw back, too far not to be enamoured of the merciless dominion that I found I could command. When I knew it, I grew wholly reckless. I had been foully, basely wronged, and all that was dangerous in me rose and hardened. I had been stabbed in