Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/12

Rh taste, and did really know something about the arts, and such persons suffer very acutely from what the peculiar mind of your modern municipalities calls, in its innocence, "improvements."

The Lady Hilda had been to a reception too the night before, and had gone with the preconceived conviction that a certain illustrious Sovereign had not been far wrong when she had called Floralia the Botany Bay of modern society; but then the Lady Hilda was easily bored, and not easily pleased, and liked very few things, almost none;—she liked her horses, she liked M. Worth, she liked bric-à-brac, she liked her brother, Lord Clairvaux, and when she came to think of it,—well, that was really all.

The Lady Hilda was a beautiful woman, and knew it; she was dressed in the height of fashion, i.e., like a mediæval saint out of a picture; her velvet robe clung close to her, and her gold belt, with its chains and pouch and fittings, would not have disgraced Cellini's own working; her hair was in a cloud in front and in a club behind; her figure was perfect: M.