Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/276

Rh still lost in thought till his lamp grew low, and the wind rising loud, shook the leaded panes of the old high windows.

"I suppose when Fortune does smile at us, we always quarrel with her so," he thought, with some impatience of his own irresolution.

After all, what other man in Europe would not have been content? He got up, caressed the dog, turned the lamp higher, and went into his bed-chamber.

"Get out the white mousquetaire dress," he said to his old servant. "I will go to the Roubleskoff ball."

All patrician Floralia was at the Roubleskoff ball, one of the last great entertainments of the expiring Carnival. In six more days there would come the Day of Ashes; and Floralia would repent her sins in sadness,—that is, with only musical parties, a dinner here and there, and no suppers at all; (perhaps a ball might be squeezed in once or twice by grace of the Russian Calendar, but, then, if you took advantage of that you were brouillé with all the codini at once).

He reached the Roubleskoff villa late, not so