Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/15

8 The Lady Hilda looked out of the window and found it raining heavily. When the sky of Floralia does rain, it does it thoroughly, and gets the disagreeable duty over, which is much more merciful to mankind than the perpetual drizzle and dripping of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, or Middlesex. It was the rain that had made her almost inclined to think she would write a novel; she was so tired of reading them.

She countermanded her carriage; had some more wood thrown on the fire; and felt disposed to regret that she had decided to winter here. She missed all her bibelots, and all the wonderful shades and graces of colour with which her own houses were made as rich, yet as subdued in tone as any old cloisonne enamel. She had the finest rooms, here, in an hôtel which had been the old palace of Murat; and she had sent for flowers to fill every nook and corner of them, an order which Floralia will execute for as many francs as any other city would ask in napoleons.

But there is always a nakedness and a gaudiness in the finest suites of any hôtel; and the Lady Hilda, though she had educated