Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/351

 like, or ever will like. She will be very unhappy as she grows older, and I dare say she will be quite capable of leaving all her money away from her family to build a cathedral, or found a School of Art."

And Madame Mila, impatient, nodded to the Duc, and dashed away in the victoria behind the white and black liveries. She was managing to enjoy her Lent after all: her mind being at rest about those sixty thousand francs, there was no occasion to be so very rigid; low bodices she did not wear, because she was a woman of her word; but then she had half a hundred divine confections, cut square, or adorned with ruffs, or open en cœur with loveliest lace and big bouquets of roses, to make that form of renunciation simpler; there was plenty going on, and little "sauteries," which nobody could call balls, and pleasant gatherings, quite harmless, because only summoned for "music," and altogether, what with the oasis of mi-Carême, and the prolongation of the Carnival in Russian houses, life was very endurable; and there were Neapolitan oysters to fast upon comfortably.