Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/318

Rh saying so sweetly, "Pour nos pauvres—pour nos chers pauvres!"

"The best little woman in the world," as everybody said, Madame Mila would kiss her female enemies on both cheeks wherever she met them; and when she had sent an anonymous letter (for fun), always sent an invitation to dinner just after it, to the same direction.

"I wish I knew how it is really between them," she thought at the Archduchess's dinner-table, divided between her natural desire to see her cousin let fall that "white flower of a blameless life," which stinks as garlic in the nostrils of those who have it not, and her equally natural apprehension that Paolo della Rocca as a lover would not let his mistress pay other persons' debts, and would also be sure to see all her letters.

"She'll tell him everything about everybody," thought Madame Mila, uncomfortably; for Della Rocca had a look in his eyes of assured happiness, which, to the astute experience of Madame Mila, suggested volumes.

Meantime she was also harassed by an