Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/365

 "What had he to do there?—if the law cannot enforce itself, leave it alone in its impotency. But he had some idea that because his own villages were amongst those who suffered most, it was his place to go there and do what the law cannot do:—he was always Quixotic, poor Paolo. The last thing heard of him was that he had left Palermo with an escort of men whom he had chosen and paid himself, and had gone up towards the mountains. His dead body will be the first tidings that we have; the monster Pibro has spies in all directions, and holds that district in a perfect reign of terror."

She went out into society as Easter came, and heard all that they said, and gave no sign of what she suffered. Worth sent her new marvels of the spring, and she wore them, and was endlessly courted and envied, and quoted and wondered at. She was a little chillier and more cynical than ever, and women observed with pleasure that she was looking ill and growing too thin, which would spoil her beauty. That was all. But she had never thought such pain possible in life as she endured now.