Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/247

236 with a tarnished glory only in his gift, was but an outlawed and necessitous Camorrist, who saw in her beauty, and her talent, and her wide wealth from the vast Eastern fief, so many means whereby to enrich himself and to ensnare all others. And when she had learned it, and felt its bitter falsehood eat into her very soul, he, lest she should break from him, had cast subtilely about her that poisonous film of imputed dishonour which, once breathed, never passes; he had done it ruthlessly, or rather, let others do it and never said them nay, which served as well. She had been sacrificed, true, but that had been of little account to him, since through it the gold, and the harvests, and the luxury of the Roumelian possessions were shared by him; his name alone, spoken with hers, had cast shadow enough to darken it. Then, when that last evil had been done against her, she had grown hardened to this world, which so easily believed against her; she had grown callous to this outlawry, which was pronounced against her through the errors of another. She was wronged; she did not stoop to appeal or to protest; the bravery of her nature was steeled into defiance, the independence of her Ufe accepted willingly an isolation which yet was a sovereignty; she had a wide vengeance in her power, and she took it—with too little mercy.