Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/289

 she didn't think everybody else such a fool she'd be more comfortable."

Della Rocca smiled.

"Pardon me,—you will disturb the birds."

Lord Clairvaux recollected that he ought not to talk of his sister to a stranger, and, bringing his gun to his shoulder, fired into a covey of wild ducks.

"What a handsome fellow that is, like an old picture," he thought to himself, as he looked at Della Rocca, who sat in the prow of the boat; but he did not connect him in his thoughts with Lady Hilda in any way: for ten years he had got so tired of vainly wondering why this man and that did not please her, and had been made so vexed and perplexed by her rejection of the Prince of Deutschland, that he had ceased to think of her as a woman who could possibly ever care for anybody. One night, however, when he had been there five days, he was walked about in the crowd of the Veglione by little Madame Mila, masked, and draped as black as a little beetle; and Madame Mila, who was getting tired of things standing