Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/151

 destined to drag out its weary days between the cab-shafts till the end comes in the knacker's yard?

As for the Lady Hilda, she was so used to be the observed of all observers wherever she went, that she never heeded who looked at her, and never troubled herself what anybody might say.

She walked about with Della Rocca, talked with him, and let him sit by her in little sheltered camellia-filled velvet-hung nooks, because it pleased her, and because he looked like an old Velasquez picture in that white Louis Treize dress. Of what anybody might think she was absolutely indifferent; she was not mistress of herself and of fifty thousand a year to care for the tittle-tattle of a small winter city.

It was very pleasant to be mistress of herself—to do absolutely as she chose—to have no earthly creature to consult—to go to bed in Paris and wake up in St. Petersburg if the fancy took her—to buy big diamonds till she could outblaze Lady Dudley—to buy thoroughbred horses and old pictures and costly porcelains and all sorts of biblots, ancient and curious, that might please her