Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/128

Rh After dinner there was a new tenor, who was less of a delusion than most new tenors are; and there was a great deal of very æsthetic and abstruse talk about music; she said little herself, but sat and listened to Della Rocca, who spoke often and eloquently, with infinite grace and accurate culture. To a woman who has cared for no one all her life, there is the strangest and sweetest pleasure in finding at last one voice whose mere sound is melody to her.

On the whole she went to bed still with that dreamful content which had come on her in the day—no doubt with the fresh sea wind. She knew that she had looked at her best in a dress of pale dead gold, with old black Spanish lace; and she had only one regret—that in too soft a mood she had allowed an English person, a Lady Featherleigh, of whom she did not approve, to be presented to her.

She was habitually the one desire and the one despair of all her countrywomen.

Except so far as her physical courage, her skill in riding, and her beautiful complexion, which no cold could redden, and no heat could change,