Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/14

Rh society always said so. The Clairvaux people were very terribly poor, though very noble and mighty. She had been married at sixteen, immediately on her presentation, to a great European capitalist of nondescript nationality, who had made an enormous fortune upon the Stock Exchanges in ways that were never enquired into, and this gentleman, whose wealth was as solid as it sounded fabulous, had had the good taste to die in the first months of their wedded life, leaving her fifty thousand a year, and bequeathing the rest of his money to the Prince Imperial. Besides her large income she had the biggest jewels, the choicest horses, the handsomest house in London, the prettiest hotel in Paris, &c, &c, &c.; and she could very well afford to have a fresh toilette a-day from her friend Worth if she chose. Very often she did choose. "What a lucky creature," said every other woman: and so she was. But she would have been still more so had she not been quite so much bored. Boredom is the ill-natured pebble that always will get in the golden slipper of the pilgrim of pleasure.