Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/80

 after him, and so raise up the old name to its olden dignity; but for himself

He got up and walked to the window; the clear winter stars, large before morning, were shining through the iron bars and lozenged panes of the ancient casement; the fountain in the cortile was shining in the moonlight; the ducal coronet, carved in stone above the gateway, stood out whitely from the shadows.

"After all, she would despise me, and I should despise myself," he thought; the old coronet had been sadly battered in war, but it had never been chaffered and bought.