Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/344

Rh had not spared herself the sight of so much desecration. She conceived that Genseric or the Constable de Bourbon must have been much less painful than a syndicate and an army of bricklayers. She refused to go out anywhere on the score of its being Lent, and she meditated going to London for the season to that very big house in Eaton Square, which she honoured for about three months in as many years. She hated London, and its society was a mob, and its atmosphere was thickened soda-water, and no other place had such horrible endless dinner parties. Still she was going;—when?—oh, tomorrow or next week.

But to-morrow became yesterday, and next week became last week, and her black and white liveries were still airing themselves on the steps of the Murat, and her black horses still were trotting to and fro the stones of Floralia, bearing little Madame Mila hither and thither.

Their own mistress stirred out but little; it was damp weather, and she coughed, and she shut herself up with millions of hyacinths and z