Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/101

 south, is only a tradition, smothered under cigar-ash, and buried in a gun-case.

As for him, he mused, while he talked to her, on the words of the Duc, who had known her all her life. Was it true that she had never felt even a passing "weakness?" Was it certain that she had always been as cold as she looked?

He wished that he could be sure.

After all, she was a woman of wonderful charm, though she did go about with Madame Mila, smoke cigarettes after dinner, and correct you as to the last mot made on the boulevards. He began to think that this was only the mere cachet of the world she lived in; only the mere accident of contact and habit.

All women born under the Second Empire have it more or less; and, after all, she had but little of it; she was very serene, very contemptuous, very high-bred; and her brilliant languid hazel eyes looked so untroubled that it would have moved any man into a wish to trouble their still and luminous depths.

She seemed to him very objectless and somewhat cynical. It was a pity. Nature had made