Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/294

 never felt so nervous since the time when he had once been called on to move the Address when Parliament opened.

"One sees a great deal of everybody in a small society like this."

"Because you know people talk about you and him,—so they say at least."

"They are very good, whoever they are: who are they?"

"Who?— Oh, I don't know; I heard so."

"How very nice of you to discuss me with other people!"

Lord Clairvaux cast a glance at her and was very much frightened at the offence he saw in her contemptuous face: how pale she was looking too, now he thought of it, and she had shadows underneath her eyes quite new to her.

"What sort of a fellow is he?" he muttered. He seemed a duffer to me about his fields—such ploughs, by heavens!—and such waste in the stackyards I never saw. But it isn't farming here at all; it's letting things go wild just anyhow—"

"It is not being wiser than Nature, and