Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/166

Rh "No!"

The answer was brief and cold; she knew that for it this man was likely enough to fire into her bosom, where he stood before her, the weapon whose muzzle thrust itself out from the folds of his striped canvas shirt.

For once he kept his coolness; she knew him then to be at his worst; his vehement, eloquent, womanish wrath was never so dangerous as when, contrary to all his temperament, he held it in check and waited, softly, silently, warily.

"No?" he laughed in echo. " What! has Miladi Vassalis gone scatheless in her scorn, for all these years to be charmed by a rough-rider's iron sinews and gigantic limbs at last! Bathos!—terrible bathos! And what will you do, madame, with your new lover?—have him killed to keep the secret of your weakness, like that fair frail Jewess of the French Regency of whom we read?" Under the coarse infamy of the sneer her face never flushed, her eyes never relaxed their steady challenge of him; but a hatred beyond all words gathered darkly in her regard, a scorn beyond all words set on her colourless lips.

"What will you do with him?" he repeated, scoffingly. "How will you square his claims and