Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/95

84 could have been, since she knew at once that she had forfeited all title to claim, all likelihood to gain it, yet knew that very often calumny had wronged and envy stained her with many a charge of which she had been as guiltless as the white arums that lay unsullied at her feet. That strong, imdoubting, imperishable trust was the one jewel of life that she had of her own will renounced her title to, yet which she could value as no other, perhaps, who had not lost it, ever could have done so welL

"Listen," she said, stooping over him where he was stretched on the foliage at her feet, while her hand strayed still with a caress among his hair and over his lips. "So much of my life as I can tell you I will—it is not a thousandth part, still it may make some things clearer to you. I am of Greek birth, as you know; and I doubt if there be in the world a descent that can claim greater names than mine. My race—nay, both races that were blent in me—stretched far back into the earliest Athenian times on one hand, and to the records of Byzantium on the other. A myth moreover blends in me Halicarnassian descent from Artemisia;—that is doubtless legend. But I was the last to represent the pure Greek stock, and it was the one of which I was the prouder, though it had fallen into evil fortunes and