Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/309

 it magnificently; and when men proposed whose own position would have made the loss of her own money of no moment, she still repulsed them, thinking always "le mieux est l'ennemi du bien."

The fact of this later will was scarcely known beyond the precincts of the law and the circle of their own family; but since she had met Della Rocca, the remembrance of it had kept her awake many a night, and broken roughly many a day-dream.

To surrender her fortune to become his wife never once occurred to her as possible. Ten years' enjoyment of her every whim had made it seem so inalienably hers. She had entered so early into her great possessions, that they had grown to be a very part of her. The old man who had been her husband but in name was but a mere ghostly shadow to her. The freedom and the self-indulgence she had so long enjoyed had become necessary to her as the air she breathed. She could no more face the loss of her fortune than she could have done that of her beauty. It was not the mere vulgar vaunt