Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/156

Rh Beneath the softness of his manner there was a certain seriousness which had its weight with her. He made her feel ashamed of many things.

Something in his way of life also attracted her. There are a freedom and simplicity in all the habits of an Italian noble that are in strong contrast with the formal conventionalism of the ways of other men; there is a feudal affectionateness of relation between him and his dependants which is not like anything else; when he knows anything of agriculture, and interests himself personally in his people, the result is an existence which makes the life of the Paris flaneurs and the London idlers look very poor indeed.

Palestrina often saw its lord drive thither by six in the morning, walk over his fields, hear grievances and redress them, mark out new vine-walks with his bailiff, watch his white oxen turn the sods of the steep slopes, and plan trench-cuttings to arrest the winter-swollen brooks, long before the men of his degree in Paris or in London opened their heavy eyes to call for their morning taste of brandy, and awoke to the