Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/375

 Prophets, they would eat lobster salad on Mount Olivet, and they would scatter their cigar ash over Vaucluse, Marathon, the Campo Santo, or the grave at Ravenna with equal indifference; they are always amused, and defy alike the seasons and the sanctities to stop them in their amusement.

It was mid-April, and with the beginning of May would come the races, and with the races the Winter City would become the Summer City, and the winter-fashion always fled with one bound to fresh fields and pastures new, and left the town to silence, sunshine, roses, fruits, its own populace with their summer songs and summer skies, and perhaps here and there an artist or a poet, or some such foolish person, who loved it best so in its solitude.

"Do come with us, Hilda," said Madame Mila one mid-April morning.

Madame Mila was attired in the simplest morning costume of cream-hued Sicilienne covered with écru lace, and she had a simple country Dorothy hat of cream-coloured velvet, lined bleu-de-ciel, with wreaths of delicate nemophilæ and convolvuli and floating feathers,