Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/100

Rh wife have—a friendship. Madame Mila scarcely knew which refusal to condemn as the most heartless and the most vulgar.

The Lady Hilda dined with her on the morrow; and the little Comtesse, with the fine instinct at discovering future sympathies of a woman "qui a vécu," took care that Della Rocca took her cousin in to dinner.

"I would give all I possess to see Hilda attendrie," she said to herself: as what she possessed just then was chiefly an enormous quantity of unpaid bills, perhaps she would not have lost so very much. But the Lady Hilda was not attendrie: she thought he talked better than most men—at least, differently,—and he succeeded in interesting her, probably because he had been so indifferent in calling upon her. That was all. Besides, his manner was perfect; it was as vieille cour as M. de St. Louis's, and to the Italian noble alone is given the union of stateliest dignity with easiest grace.

Lady Hilda, who should have been born under Louis Quatorze, had often suffered much in her taste from an age when manner, except in the