Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/379

 you keep him when you had got him? I know you could not have married him, but nobody would have said anything."

Lady Hilda put her out into the corridor, and closed the door and locked it within.

Madame Mila, frightened, astonished, and outraged, went down to her Maurice, and the drag, and the ribboned and powdered postillions, and the horses with their jingling bells and plaited tails; the gay calvacade rattled off along the river-street towards the city gates as the clocks tolled three.

Lady Hilda and S. Ursula were left alone.

Within less than half-an-hour the black horses were harnessed and bore their mistress towards Palestrina. Never before moved by impulse, impulse alone governed her now; the impulse of despair and remorse. She cared nothing who saw her or who knew; for once she had forgotten herself.

The long drive seemed eternity; she thought the steep winding mountain roads would never end; when Palestrina came in sight, pale and stately against its dark background of forest trees,