Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/240

Rh "I should not let any third person blame you."

"You are very strange, Hilda," said Madame Mila, eyeing her with a curious wonder, and ruffling herself up in her embroidered pink cashmere dressing-gown, as if she were a little bird in the heart of a big rose, "Why should you defend people behind their back? Nobody ever does. We all say horrible things of one another; but we don't mean half of them, so what does it matter? I don't blame Olga, not in the least; Schouvaloff is a brute, and, besides, he knows it very well, and he doesn't mind a bit; indeed, of course he's glad enough"

"I do blame Olga; but I can't see how you can," said her cousin, coldly.

Madame Mila ruffled herself more, looking more and more like a little angry bird in the middle of a pink rose.

"I? Pray what can anybody say of me? Spiridion is always with me half the year at least. Spiridion is extremely fond of Maurice, so are all the children. He's at another hôtel, right at the other end of the place; really I can't see why