Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/329

318 insolence. She turned her eyes on him, and the look smote him speechless.

"You played me false," she said to him. "Where is he?" He stammered, then was silent. She dazzled and affrighted him, as her sudden apparition had done in the blaze of the noonday. He thought coarse and evil things against her; he had heard them said, and deemed them true; but in her presence, even to think them seemed a sacrilege.

"Where is he?" she repeated. "Answer me."

"He is near you." He spoke at random; with the flicker of the lamp on the scarlet of her dress, and the gleam of her loose-hanging hair, her beauty looked to him unearthly.

"In this building" "Yes. You are both—kept here because—until" He stopped confusedly, and bent above the wick of the lamp, as though it needed trimming.

"Until what?"

"Until the king's pleasure," he replied, sullenly.

She came closer to him.

"You are a soldier?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Well then, brave men are commonly pitiful. Let me see him for one hour to-night."