Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/200

Rh "You think you do; you do not. You go to hear a few soft words from lips that have duped the subtlest intriguers in Europe, and to believe every phrase that they breathe with a kiss upon yours, as though it were witnessed by angels! I tell you that my honour shall not rest upon so wayward and so frail a thing as her caprice of invention."

"And I tell you that her honour shall not rest upon the tongues of traitors. You have dared to say she shielded my assassin"

"I say more;—I say she loved him. No! Take your hand off; you can seek my life later on; at present you must save your own, if you do not want a Bourbon bullet through your lungs for this woman who has fooled you, as she fools us all. There is one man, one only, that your mistress ever loved. She has wearied of him now, found him a thorn in her side, learned to hate him as such women can hate, drawn all the fragrance from her rose, and thrown the old withered leaves away—only the leaves are poisoned, and they cling, they cling! One man she loved, and she lavished her gold on him, and she reared her ambitions for him, and she was half his slave and half his sovereign, while she was for all the world beside that beautiful, cruel, wanton, pitiless, divine, and devilish sorceress that we know. She