Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/178

Rh us, though they know quite well what we think of them, and how we esteem them, and why we go to them—well, I don't see that they deserve anything better."

"Nor I," said the Lady Hilda. "Only I shouldn't go to them—that's all. And it is very funny, my love, that you, who have lived in all the great courts of Europe, and have had your own Embassy in London, should care one straw for a ball at the Joshua R. Postiche's. Good gracious! You must have seen about seventy thousand balls in your time!"

"I am only six years older than you, Hilda," said she, tartly. "I suppose you've been telling Della Rocca not to go to the Postiche's—Olga and the Baroness and Madame Valkyria, and scores of them have been trying to persuade him all the week, because if he stay away so many of the other men will; and none of us can stir him an inch about it. 'On peut être de très-braves gens—mais je n'y vais pas,' that is all he says; as if their being 'braves gens' or not had anything to do with it; and yet I saw him the other day with his hand on a contadino's shoulder in