Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/99

 of gossip henceforward. Run about society with your concoctions in and out of the best houses, as fast as you can go, and there will be no end to your popularity. You will be as refreshing to the thirst of the dwellers in them as are the lemonade-sellers to the throats of the populace.

Perhaps Fate still lurked and worked in the Latin land, and had hidden herself under the delicate marabouts of the chapeau Incroyable; at any rate, Madame Mila welcomed the Duc and his companion with eagerness, and engaged them both to dinner with her on the morrow in a way which there was no refusing.

Madame Mila was discontented with the news of the day. All her young men could only tell her of one person's ruin—poor Victor de Salaris', which she had always predicted and contributed to cause, and which was therefore certainly the more agreeable—and two scenes between married people whom she knew: one because the brute of a husband would not allow his wife to have her tallest footman in silk stockings; the other because the no less a brute of a husband would not let his