Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/119

108 do more than rouse his passion against the slanderer, his chivalry for the slandered.

"They were all lies!" he muttered in his beard, his face flushing as those distant memoríes stole on him. "All lies!—where are the tellers of them?" She started slightly, and her eyes carne back from their dreaming speculation and dwelt on his.

"What were the lies?"

"Things that I heard of you—once. I remember now"

"Ah!" A quick sigh escaped her—she would so gladly have kept her life fair and unshadowed in this man's sight at least. "Well, do not blame the tellers of them; my life laid me open to misconstruction; no one can complain, if their lives do so, of any calumny that may befall them."

Her voice was cold and careless; the evil of calumny had not possessed power to wound, but it had possessed power to chill and harden her, and the venom had left its trail thus for ever.

"But why"

He paused, not willing even by a syllable to risk trenching on that silence which she thought it fittest to keep unbroken.

"Why did I so leave it open? For many things. First, ere I knew what calumny meant—when I was