Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/155

 street songs and hurrying feet, she fell into feverish dreams, and, waking later, did not know what ailed her.

From that time Della Rocca ceased to avoid the Hotel Murat; he was received there oftener than on her "day;" he went about with her on various pilgrimages to quaint old out-of-the-way nooks of forgotten art which he could tell her of knowing every nook and corner of his native city; she almost always invited him when she had other people to dine with her; her cousin did the same, and he was usually included in all those manifold schemes for diversions which women like Madame Mila are always setting on foot, thinking with Diderot's vagabond that it is something at any rate to have got rid of Time.

Sometimes he availed himself of these opportunities of Fortune, sometimes he did not. His conduct had a variableness about it which did more than anything else would have done to arrest the attention of a woman sated with homage as the Lady Hilda had been all her days. She missed him when he was absent; she was influenced by him when he was present.