Page:Wanda, by Ouida.djvu/20

Rh his poorer brethren, and the ties of mutual affection which bound together her and her people's interests.

'The weapon of our order against the Sociahst is duty,' she had once said to him.

He, more sceptical, had told her that no weapon, not even that anointed one, can turn aside the devilish hate of envy. But she held to her creed, and strove to rear her children in its tenets. It always seemed to her that the Cross before which the fiend shrinks cowering in 'Faust' is but a symbol of the power of a noble life to force even hatred to its knees.

She did not care for this season in Paris, but she did not let him perceive any dissatisfaction in her. She made her own interests out of the arts and charity; she bought the Hôtel Noira, and left everything as the Duc had left it; she found pleasure in intercourse with her royal exiled friends, and left her husband his own entire liberty of action.

'Are you never jealous?' said her royal friend to her once. 'He is so much liked — so much made love to — I wonder you are not jealous!'

'I?' she echoed: and it seemed to her friend as if in that one pronoun she had said volumes. 'Jealous!'

She repeated the word as she drove home