Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/229

 impossible here. There was religion in the place, a different one to what she had known kneeling at the messe des paresseux in the Madeleine; the sort of religion that a woman only becomes aware of when she loves.

She started and seemed to wake from a dream when Princess Olga suggested that it was time to go; Princess Olga was a person of innumerable engagements, who was always racing after half an hour without ever catching it, like the Minister-Duke of Newcastle, and like ninety-nine people out of every hundred in the nineteenth century. There was some bric-à-brac the Princess wanted somebody to cheapen for her; she bade him come and do it; he complied willingly enough. They went all three to that bric-à-brac shop, and thence to another, and yet another. Then Princess Olga, who was used to a more brilliant part than that of the "terza incommoda," left them to themselves over the faïence and marqueterie.

Lady Hilda who, despite all her fashion, liked walking like every healthy woman, dismissed her horses, and walked the length of the river-street,