Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/185

174 "In a word—I mean this. She has bought you with syren words; do you dream how many she has bought likewise before you, and—destroyed?" "I know that no man living shall insult her name to me unpunished."

"Ah! you will stop my lips with a blow? Honourable women do not need such tragical defence. Let me ask you one thing only"

"Ask it."

"Who fired at you in the Carpathians?"

In the warm glow of the summer dawn Erceldoune's limbs grew chilly with a sudden sickly cold. He did not answer. He divined the drift of the inquiry.

"You do not know! You should do so. Did you ever ask this woman who is to be your wife?"

His chest heaved heavily with hard-drawn breaths; his memories were with the evening just passed by, when the sunset had shed its ruddy hues on the face of the slumbering Greek, and she had bade him spare that worthless life with a passionate force of supplication to which she had never stooped when her own existence had been in jeopardy. But he was too loyal to her for his answer not to rise hot and instant to his lips.

"Ask her? Would I do her so much outrage?"