Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/390

 in Europe, and lo!—the Duc remained in an amazement and a sense of humiliation from which he could not recover.

"C'est étonnant!" he murmured again and again. "Who would ever have believed that Miladi was a woman to beggar herself and play the romance of the 'world lost for love?' If I had only imagined—if I had only dreamed! I will never propose a marriage to any living being again; never."

"You have nothing to be so remorseful about, Duc," said Lord Clairvaux, with a sigh, himself utterly exhausted by all the law work that he had been obliged to go through. "It is very funny certainly—she of all women in the world! But they are happy enough, and he really is the only living creature that ever could manage her. If anybody had ever told me that any man would change Hilda like that!"

"Happy!" echoed M. de St. Louis, with his delicate and incredulous smile. He was a man who had no delusions; he was perfectly aware that there were no marriages that were happy; some were calm, this was the uttermost, and