Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/30

Rh jewels. Della Rocca thought she might have stepped down out of a Giorgione canvas, and ventured to tell her so. He gave her the carte du pays of the penal settlement around her, and talked to her more seriously for some considerable time. Himself and the Duc de St. Louis were the only people she deigned to take any notice of; and she went away in an hour, or rather less, leaving a kind of flame from her many jewels behind her, and a frozen sense of despair in the hearts of the women, who had watched her, appalled yet fascinated.

"Mais quelle femme impossible!" said Della Rocca, as he went out into the night air.

"Impossible! mais comment donc?" said the Duc de St. Louis, with vivacity and some anger.

The Duc de St. Louis worshipped her, as every year of his life he worshipped three hundred and sixty-five ladies.

"Impossible!" echoed Della Rocca, with a cigar in his mouth.

Nevertheless, the next day, when the rain was falling in such torrents that no female creature was likely to be anywhere but before her fire, he