Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/214

Rh so close to him, that he fell back with the coward's instinct of physical fear.

"You have been often bought for murder. What price will buy you from it?"

The words left her lips with a scorn that burnt like name, with a bitterness that cut like steel. Neither touched him; he laughed again in the content of his triumph.

"What price, my Countess? None!"

"You want gold—you love gold. You would sell your soul for gold. You shall have it"

The dread upon her made her voice deep and hushed, like the stealing of an autumn storm-wind through forests; the scorn within her made her £ace flush, and darken, and quiver, as though the flicker of a torch played on it. Neither moved him to shame.

"Oh yes," he said, with a slow smile—"gold, gold, gold. Of course you would give me that. As much as you would throw away on a banquet, or a diamond, or a web of lace, should come to me, if I would stay aloof and hold my peace, and let the Border Eagle build his eyrie on the Roumelian hills, and Miladi pleasure her new passion among her rose-gardens. Oh yes! gold—as much gold as you have twisted in your hair for a mask ball might be mine,