Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/317

 had helped or hindered circumstance amongst her friends and enemies with many ingenious little devices and lucky little anonymous notes, and other innocent shifts and stratagems. It was no use being in the world at all unless you interfered with the way it went; to be a mere puppet in the hands of Fate, with the strings of accident dangling to and fro, seemed to her clever little brains quite unworthy the intelligence of woman.

She never meant to do any harm, oh, never; only she liked things to go as she wished them. Who does not? If a few men and women had been made wretched for life, and people who loved one another devotedly had been parted for ever, and suspicion and hatred had crept into the place of trust and tenderness in certain households, Madame Mila could not help that, any more than one can help other people being splashed with mud when one drives down a lane in bad weather. And nobody ever thought Madame Mila could do any harm; pretty, good-natured, loquacious, little Madame Mila, running about with her little rosebuds at fancy fairs, and