Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/342

Rh "Innocent! When you are his mistress!" "I am not his—nor any man's."

"Ah, God! Take care how you betray me afresh. I am mad, I think, to-night ! "

"I do not betray you. I have never betrayed. I left you to believe me dishonoured, lest worse should come unto you."

"What! when you harboured him, forsook me for him, of your own confession loved him!"

"I spared him for my truth's sake, I forsook you for your life's sake. I loved him in childhood—yes. Then only." "In childhood! What are you to him?"

"Wait—wait! It sickens me to tell! Out of the greatness of your own heart you judged my life—you judged it rightly"

"What are you to him?"

"To my eternal shame—his daughter!"

Her head was sunk down on the stone floor of the prison-chamber as the words left her, slowly, unwillingly, as though her existence itself were torn and dragged out with them; to the woman who had the pride of an imperial blood, with all the superb insolence of beauty, genius, and power, without their peer, it was humiliation, as deep as to lay bare a felon's brand, to own her kinship with crime