Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/363

 time in all her life Lady Hilda, leaning against the strong north wind, had lost her consciousness and had fainted.

"How very strange people are," thought Madame Mila, when an hour later her cousin had recovered herself, and had attributed her weakness to the chloral at night and the scent of her oil paints. "If she cared for him like that, why didn't she keep him when she had got him?—she might have hung him to her skirt like her châtelaine; nobody would ever have said anything; I do begin to think that with all her taste, and all her cleverness, she has, after all, not so very much savoir faire."

No one had much savoir faire to Madame Mila's mind who did not manage always to enjoy themselves without scruples and also without scenes.

The house in London was ordered to be kept ready night and day, but no one went to occupy it. M. Camille Odissot, stimulated by dread of his patroness's daily arrival in Paris, worked marvels of celerity upon the ballroom walls, and