Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/43

36 Newmarket Spring Meeting, or perhaps before, since he had to see "Major Fridolin" in Paris.

On the whole, the next morning Lady Hilda, looking out of the hotel window, decided to stay in Floralia.

She ordered her carriage out early, and drove hither and thither to enjoy tranquilly the innumerable treasures of all the arts in which the city of Floralia is so rich.

A Monsignore whom she knew well, learned, without pedantry, and who united the more vivacious accomplishments of the virtuoso to the polished softness of the churchman, accompanied her. The Clairvaux people from time immemorial had been good Catholics.

Lady Hilda for her part never troubled her head about those things, but she thought unbelief was very bad form, and that to throw over your family religion was an impertinence to your ancestors. Some things in the ceremonials of her church grated on her æsthetic and artistic ideas, but then these things she attributed to the general decadence of the whole age in taste.