Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/136

Rh "Let me go," he whispered, thirstily. "You shall see him lie dead at your feet—dead, like the bravee horse that rotted to carrion through him."

She shivered, as though an ice-cold wind had passed over her; but danger had been too long her atmosphere, and the tempests of men's hearts too long the powers by which she swayed them, not to nerve her to force and calmness when both were needed. She was deathly pale, except for those flashes of shame that had made the blood rush backward to her veins; but she spoke tranquilly, laying her hand upon his mouth, and with that command which never, in moments of need, deserted her.

"Peace. Those are not like yourself—those tíger instincts. Leave them to him; they are beneath you."

"They are not. They are my right."

"Is revenge ever a right?" "We deemed it so in old Scotland. A right divine!"

His face was stern and evil still, with the storm of his longing wrath, with the pent tide of his loosening jealousy.

"Divine? Devilish! Right or wrong, lay it down for my bidding,"