Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/219

208 "Been wronged by you. True. I forgot the reason of your hate."

His face flushed darkly.

"I do not bear you hate. I tried to free you. But I swear this man shall not wed with you, and live."

"And why? Have you not done us injury enough? You poisoned my life with infamy, and would have taken his in a thief's slaughter. Can you not let us be? Can you not sell yourself for pity's sake, as you have so often sold yourself for shameful things? Take my bríbe. Impoverish me as you will; enjoy all I have to give; seize all you have ever coveted; bind it fast to you on what terms you choose; make me poor as the poorest that ever asked my charity; only leave me this one thing, his life."

She spoke still with the same strange enforced serenity, but beneath it there ran an intense melancholy, an intense yearning; they could not move, but steeled him in, his purpose.

"The thing I will not leave you," he said, savagely. "Ah! I know how men go mad for that beauty of yours; he would hold himself rich as emperors were that his own, though you had no other gold than just what gleams in the coil of your hair. I know, I