Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/17

10 became a femme comme il faut, to stifle the intelligence she had been created with, she yet had moments in which M. Worth did not seem Jehovah, and in which Society scarcely appeared the Alpha and Omega of human existence, as of course they did to her when she was in her right frame of mind.

"I shall go to Algeria or Rome," she said to herself: it rained pitilessly, hiding even the bridges on the opposite side of the river; she had a dreadful magenta-coloured chair, and the window curtains were scarlet; the letters were on thin foreign paper and crossed; the book was unreadable; at luncheon they had given her horrible soup and a vol-au-vent that for all flavour it possessed might have been made of acorns, ship-biscuit and shalots; and she had just heard that her cousin the Countess de Caviare, whom she never approved of, and who always borrowed money of her, was coming also to the Hotel Murat. It was not wonderful that she settled in her own mind to leave Floralia as soon as she had come to it.

It was four o'clock.