Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/186

Rh "Yet no one could tell you so well."

"What ! you are vile enough to say"

"The villany is not mine! I say that Idalia Vassalis can tell you better who is the man that sought to take your life than can any one else in Europe."

Erceldoune heard in silence; he felt giddy, blind, heartsick; his knowledge of her association with his enemy was lying like a dead weight on the indignant scorn with which he would, without it, have flung back the insult offered her; the remembrance was upon him of her intercession that had screened the criminal from justice, of her conjuration that had interposed between the guilty and his retribution, of the mingling of shame and of terror that had broken and bent her haughty nature like a reed.

"You lie," he said, savagely, seeking only to defend her at all hazards. "She never knew;—he is her foe not less than mine."

"Ah! she has spoken of him then!"

"What if she have?"

"Nothing. She said he was her foe, did she? What other things did she say of him?"

Erceldoune*s hand seized him by the linen of his vest, and shook him as a strong grasp will shake the slender stem of a larch-tree.

"You will make a brute of me! You have some