Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/359

 on the river, and walked to and fro her chamber; a lofty, slender, white figure in the pale gleam of the lamp-rays.

A passionate, feverish, disordered pain consumed her. It terrified her. Would it be thus weeks, months, years—all her life?

"Perhaps it is the chloral that unnerves one," she thought; "I will not take it any more."

"Only fancy, ma chère," said Madame Mila to her next morning, with the pretty cat-like cruelty of the Mila species, "only fancy—that poor dear Della Rocca is gone to his death in Sicily. So they say. There is a horrid brigand who has been hanging some of his farmers there to trees, and burning their cottages, Della Rocca's farmers, you know; and he is gone to see about it, and to capture the wretched creature,—as if he could when all the soldiers and all the police have failed! He will be quite certain to be shot; isn't it a pity? He is so handsome, and if he would marry that little American Spiffler girl with all her millions he might be very happy. That little Spiffler is really not unpresentable, and her people will give the largest dot ever heard of if they can