Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/73

 "No, I don't. I am too old for much ball-going," answered the barrister curtly.

Meanwhile, though Fenella never once looked his way, she felt that her husband's eyes were stabbing her with glances like daggers. It hurt; but she had the sweet revenge of knowing she was wounding his pride in return, though the false Circe by his side might try to pour in balm. So, looking a picture of girlish sweetness in her delicious white gown, so simple seemingly, so costly—a white bud of a little creature in contradistinction to the darker, maturer charms of her handsome rival, she listened with apparent eagerness to De Mürger.

"Yes, I should regret not going to Vienna this summer, if I were not here. You do not know it. Ah, how I should like to show you our Prater. And the life, the gayety. How you would enjoy it!"

"Do you know Vienna?" asked Mme. de Vigny of Onslow in clear tones, as if her neighbors were dummies. "It is—how do you say it in English?—la ville la plus dévergondée in Europe."

At the inference that this abandoned capital will suit herself, in madame's evident opinion, Fenella's pale small cheeks take a sudden rosy tint, her tawny eyes gleam with quite a tigerish flash. She throws up her head, challenging Onslow mutely to dare countenance the insult.