Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/296

Rh don't say he's a bad shot, though he's a bad farmer—and he is an awfully good-looking fellow, like an old picture, and all that. Only I must go to-night, Hilda, and I do want to speak to you."

"You are speaking all this time I believe," said Lady Hilda icily, looking across at him with the coldest challenge in her darkening eyes.

"I never could think why you didn't take Deutschland," he muttered, reverting to an old grievance.

"He didn't please me. Is that all you wanted to say?"

"But I thought you'd have cared to be a reigning sovereign?"

"Of a small State?" said the Lady Hilda, with an eloquent lift of her eyebrows.

"Well, there was De Ribeaupierre; he was everything anybody could want; Vienna, too; I used to think an Ambassadress's life would just suit you."

"Always calling on people and writing notes? No life on earth more tiresome."

Rh