Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/46

Rh a gulf never to be passed between them and this world-famed élégante.

Lady Hilda would have said her secret lay in her always being just a quarter of an hour in advance of the fashion. She was always the first person to be seen, in what six weeks afterwards was the rage: and when the rage came, then Lady Hilda had dropped the fashion. Hence she was the perpetual despair of all her sex—a distinction which she was quite human enough to enjoy in a contemptuous sort of way; as contemptuous of herself as of others; for she had a certain vague generosity and largeness of mind which lifted her above mean and small emotions in general.

She had been steeped in the world, as people call that combination of ennui, excitement, selfishness, fatigue, and glitter, which forms the various delights of modern existence, till it had penetrated her through and through, as a petrifying stream does the supple bough put in it. But there were little corners in her mind which the petrifaction had not reached.

This morning—it was half-past five o'clock in