# Idalia/Volume 1/Chapter 10

CHAPTER X.
THE SOVEREIGN OF THE ROUND TABLE.
All the day Eroeldoune spent aimlessly; he took his rifle and went over wild tracts of outlying country, he never asked or knew where, but be scarcely fired a shot; the hours seemed endless till they brought the evening, and he walked on and on through sear deserted valleys, and over hills thick clothed with the sombre cypress, with little object except to throw off the fever in him by exhausting exercise and bodily fatigue. The tumultuous happiness and the restless disquiet he felt were alike new to him; he was not a man easily to be the fool of his passions, or to let loose his judgment in their intoxication; he had held them down in almost as stern a curb as any of the iron knights of the Calatrava, and now, in solitude, and in the calmness of morning, he saw his own peril and his own madness as he had not in the enchantment of her presence, or in the impassioned phantasies of ​the night. He loved her; he did not disguise it from himself; he was not likely to mislead either his own mind or others by the veil of a specious sophistry; and in the freshness and the abandonment of those first hours there came the chillier memory of the bidding she had given him, to leave her and remain a stranger to her. Fear or doubt were alike alien to him. Yet, in calmer reason, he could not but remember that such words must have their motive in some cause he could not fathom; that their mere expression had been strange, and argued of mystery, if not of evil. She had spoken nothing of herself; there remained still unexplained, unguessed at, the cause she had had for the concealment of her name at Monastica, or of her presence at all in those barbaric Moldavian wilds. Who was she? What was her history? He could not tell. Not even did he know whether she were wedded or unwedded; whether his love could ever bring him any chance of happiness through it, or whether it were already forbidden and doomed to be its own misery, its own curse. He knew nothing. And alone on the hill-side, with the vulture wheeling above-head in the noon skies, and the cypress thickets stretching downward to the precipice beneath his feet, a quick shudder ran through his ​blood. Had he had the mastery of his life so long only to yield it up now to break in a woman's hands? Had he believed in and followed the ideal of his dreams only to suffer through her, and be divorced from her at the last?
He ground the butt of his rifle down into the loose black soil.
"It is too late now!" he said, unconsciously, aloud. "She saved my life; she shall claim it if she will. Come what may, I will believe in her."
It was a loyal and gallant oath, pledged to the sunburnt solitudes and the blue cloudless skies. Was she for whose sake it was sworn worthy of it?
The world would have told him no, and, being questioned why, would have answered in three words:
"She is Idalia."
Anything of doubt, of depression, of pain, that had mingled with the tumult of his thoughts through the day, swept far away when the hour came for him to go to her again. One of the Albanian men-servants ushered him through the hall and into the magnificent chamber, which, once the Odà of an Anderün, served now as the reception-room of the villa; the curtains were drawn back, the blaze of light dazzled his sight, and his eyes, eagerly ​glancing through the vastness of the space for the Countess Vassalis, met instead the eyes of Victor Vane.
His first sensation was one of intense dissppointment, the next of intolerable impatience, the third of reckless hatred. He did not pause to remember how improbable it had been to think that she would have invited him alone to dine at her table; how unreasonable it was to suppose that a titled woman of so much youth and so much brilliance could live in solitude the life of a recluse; how natural it must be that she was acquainted with a man of fashionable repute and aristocratic habits, who lived chiefly abroad, and knew almost every continental family of note; he remembered none of these things; he only realised his disappointment, he only saw before him the colourless face of the guest he had once entertained, and to whom he had felt that quick contemptuous dislike which a noted rider, an untiring sportsman, a desert-hunter, and a traveller impervious to fatigue, was certain to conceive for a delicate dilettante, an idle flâneur, a rusé silken speculator and courtier, such as Vane appeared to him.
Something in the very attitude of this man, moreover, as he leant against a marble console playing with a scarlet rose, and humming a Spanish Bolero ​to himself, suggested the familiarity of custom, of intimacy; he looked like one in his own home—not less so from the way in which he advanced to Erceldoune with a cordial, pleasant smile of welcome. His smile was, indeed, always very sweet, and of a rarely winning promise.
"Ah, Sir Fulke!—charmed to renew our acquaintance. I was delighted to hear from the Countess that she expected the pleasure of seeing you this evening. I assure you I have never forgotten your most comforting hospitality on the moors; my only regret is that we have not come across each other before."
"You do me much honour, and have a long memory for a mere trifle."
Idalia had announced his acquaintance with her to Victor Vane: they had talked of him then! He could not—would not—have spoken her name to friend or stranger.
"The Countess tells me that you think you met about here one of your Moldavian assassins," pursued the other, not noticing, or not seeming to notice, the coldness with which his advances were met. "I am not surprised—so many rascals come eastwards. I hope you will be able to track the fellow?"
​"My only regret is, that I did not shoot him down."
The answer was brief and stern. He could have shot down the man before him.
"Ah! great pity you didn't. Chivalry is wasted on these condottieri; I have seen too much of the scamps in Italy. That was a strange affair, that, in the Carpathians? Motive was political, I should suppose?"
"Probably. Politics is the hospital for broken scoundrels."
Vane laughed softly and merrily. He was a polished gentleman and a polished diplomatist, and never betrayed it if he were hit.
"True enough! I used to busy myself with politics once on a time; but, on my soul, I found myself in such bad company, that I was glad to throw up the cards, and leave the tables. Voiia ! two of my best friends! Allow me the honour of introducing them to one who, before long, I hope, will let me claim him to make a trio! The Count Laraxa—Baron Falkenstiern—Sir Fulke Erceldoune."
Erceldoune looked at the two men—Hungarian and Thessalian. There was nothing of the adventurer or the chevalier d'industrie, however, about ​either of them; they were of courtly breeding and of genuine rank.
"Idalia is not here?" said Laraxa, after the introduction, to Victor Vane, who gave him the slightest possible silencing glance of warning as he answered:
"She will be, in a moment, I dare say."
Erceidoune crashed his heel into the softness of the carpet with a passionate oath suppressed. What was this man to her that he had title to call her by her familiar name?—what the other that he had a right to receive her guests, and speak of her actions? At that moment Diomed threw open the broad double doors. In the flood of sunshine still pouring in through the western windows there came Idalia.
She swept towards them with the dignity and grace of a woman long accustomed to homage wherever she moved, and familiar with it to weariness. She gave the same reception to all, without a shade of difference that could have flattered any, except that, when dinner was announced as served, with a slight bend of her head she signed Erceldoune to her, and laid her hand on his arm. She might have felt the quick tremor that ran through his frame at that signal of her preference, at that light touch of her hand: she ​did see the gladness and gratitude that shone in his eyes as they gazed on her, and a sigh unconsciously escaped her—a sigh, not for herself but for him.
They passed into a large vaulted chamber, the walls of white marble, the draperies and couches of scarlet, the matting a silken amber tissue, the ceiling in fresco with wreaths of grapes and pomegranates raised in gold, and at one end a lofty fountain flinging its spray up among flowers.
"Who is that?" muttered Laraxa. "A magnificent man, and she seems to favour him. Is he—pey?"
"No. He is a beggared Queen's Messenger. Besides—don't you rememher the name?—he was Count Conrad's Border Eagle. Take care what you say before him."
Laraxa lifted his eyebrows:
"Why, in Heaven's name, is he here?"
"Idalia's caprice! You remember, she saved his life; but take care—he may overhear."
"But if Conrad——"
"Conrad is at Athens by now. Chut!"
The table was round, so that there was no place of precedence except the right hand of the hostess. The dinner was of as much sumptuousness and ​elegance as if it had been served in Paris; and the various Albanian, Negro; and Turkish attendants gave the entertainment an Arabian-like effect, heightened by the Eastern character of the confectionery and the Eastern fruits and flowers. The still lingering sunset glow was shut out, and the chamber was illumined with wax-lights in crystal or in candelabra at every point; everything about her spoke of no ordinary wealth, and had the air, moreover, of habitual luxury, even of habitual extravagance. It might be only surface deep; but that surface, at least, was brilliant.
"My table is round, like Arthur's," said Idalia, with a smile, as she sank into her chair. "There should be no precedence at a dinner-table: equality, at least, should exist over soups and entreés!"
"Where the Countess Vassalis is, can there fail to be a place of honour?
She laughed softly:
"You would have me say, like the O'Donoghue, 'Where I am, is the head of the table.' That was a truer and haughtier pride than would have lain in a struggle for precedence. The answer always pleased me."
"And yet you are for equality, Madame?" said ​Victor Vane, with a significance in the tone that did not lie in the words.
A certain contempt came into her eyes and a slight flush on her cheeks.
"My fancies, at least, remain patrician: a woman is never compelled to be consistent," she said, with a negligent indifference.
Yet no physiognomist who had studied the proud curve of her beautiful lips, or the firm mould of her delicate chin, would have said that inconsistency, or any need to take refuge in it, could ever be attributed to the Countess Vassalis, whatever other errors might lie at her score.
"What can that man be to her?" thought Erceldoune, while the dark colour flushed over his brow. Vane had not been named as any relative: there was no difference in her manner to him from her conduct to others, yet he had about him a nameless familiarity, graceful and polished like all his actions, which seemed to betoken in him either some sway over her or some accepted tie to her. Could he be her lover?—her husband? The blood grew like ice in Erceldoune's veins as the thought glanced across him. He felt dizzy, blinded, sick at heart, and drank down unconsciously the great goblet glass beside him ​that they had filled with champagne. The wine that he was used to drink like water felt now like so much fire: the fever was in his life, not in the liquid.
The dinner was as choice and seductive a one as that with which the fair intriguing Queen of Arragon subdued the senses and stole the allegiance of Villeña. There was a shadow of melancholy still on their hostess; but the dazzling glitter of her wit gained rather than lost by that certain disdainful languor—half scorn, half weariness—which was more marked in her that evening than when she had been with Erceldoune alone in the sunny, silence of the Bosphorus. A woman far less conscious of her power than she was conscious of it, would have known that all these men loved her, and were, even if unknown to them, each other's rivals. But the knowledge gave her no more sort of embarrassment than if they had been guests of her own sex. She was well used to all conquest; used to men in all their moods and all their passions; used to intoxicate them with a smile, to subdue them with a glance. She took little wine, touching each variety with her lips; but once or twice she drank a single draught of hot Chartreuse—a fiery liqueur that her sex rarely choose—and with it drove away ​the shadow that seemed on her, and abandoned herself to the gay glitter of the hour. Watching her, he could have fancied, had not the thought been too fantastic, that she had taken the Chartreuse as men take hot wines—to shake off thought, and give their spirits recklessness. Yet what could this woman, with her splendour, her power, her youth, and her fascination, desire that she had not? What could be the canker at the core of that purple and odorous pomegranate flower of her life?
The various courses were served admirably; and he might have been dining at a palace for the lavishness of the banquet. There was great brilliance, too, in the conversation; for in her presence every one strove to shine. There was considerable freedom in the topics and in the wit—more than is customary in the presence of most women, though never actually sufficient to become licence; but now and then there were flashes of jest at which Erceldoune ground his teeth: they were a profanation to his ideal—a taint on his angel. Unconsciously he had so idealised and etherealised her in his thoughts, that a soil of earth on her would defame if it were too late to dethrone her. "That is not the tone in which men speak before a hostess they reverence," he said in his soul, with fiery bitterness, while he ​glanced at her to see if she resented it. She lay back with her beautiful languor, laughing softly, slightly. She was either too familiar with it to note it, or if she felt resentment did not display it.
When only the Turkish and Levantine bruits and crystallised confections remained on the table in their silver baskets, which dainty statuettes of Odalisque slaves and Greek girls held up in a shower of flowers, hookahs were brought round by a Nubian to each of the guests.
"We have permission to smoke in your presence, then, madame?" said Erceldoune, as the porcelain narghilé was set beside him.
She looked up in slight surprise, as though the solicitation were new to her.
"Oh, yes! It is as necessary to you after dinner as your cup of coffee. Is it not?"
"It is always welcome—since you have the compassion to allow it," he answered her, as he raised the long amber-tipped tube.
She smiled.
"Of course—why not? That Latakia, I believe, is good? All the rest of it, they tell me, was bought up by the French Legation."
"It is excellent, full fragrance, but very soft. Apropos of the Chancelleries, at which of them shall ​I have the honour of meeting you most? As yet, you know, I am in ignorance of your nation."
He spoke with the natural careleasnesa of so natural a question; the Countess Vassalis must as he deemed be known by the representatives of all the great Powers. A shadow of impatience came on her face, a defiant hauteur in her eyes.
"You will meet me at none of the Embassies," she said, briefly and coldly.
And in that moment Erceldoune saw Idalia as he had never seen her before; saw in her a certain grandeur of disdainful defiance, a certain outlawed sovereignty as of one life against a world.
"The Countess Idalia has come to the East for rest," interposed Victor Vane, with his musical, gliding voice. "How is it possible to obtain it if you go en pénitence to those tedious travesties of little courts, his Excellency's receptions? Visiting your Ambassador is, I think, one of the severest penalties of foreign residence."
"Our Representative will consent, I dare say, to release you from it if you petition him; or, most likely, he will not notice your choice de briller par votre absence," said Erceldoune, curtly.
He knew the explanation was a diplomatic lie; he was tortured with bitter impatience to know why the ​man made himself her apologist, or had claim to explain her actions; his thoughts were in a conflict of conjecture as to the cause of her exclusion from the Embassies—for exclusion he believed it, by the look that for one instant he had seen upon her face.
The access of vivacity and abandon which a considerable amount of wine drunk, and the introduction of tobacco invariably produce, flowed into the conversation; its gaiety grew very gay, and though there was still nothing that was licentious, there was a tone in it not customary before women of rank; the anecdotes had a Bréda aroma, the epigrams had a Jockey Club flavour, the equivoques were fitted for a little gilded supper cabinet in the Maison Dorée; such a freedom in any other hour would have added to its piquance and its savour to Erceldonne as to all other men, but it now lashed him into vehement pain and incensement; it brought the breath of the world—and of a very profane world—on the woman of his dreams, it desecrated and almost dimmed the beauty of his ideal. Out of the mists of death he had once wakened to see her face in the haze of the sunlight; the face of an angel, the face of his altar-picture at Monastica: when he sat here in the perfume and lustre of the Eastern chamber, with the ​odours of wines and flowers, and sx)ices and incense, with the glitter of gold and azure, of silver and scarlet, with light laughter and light wit on the air, he seemed to have lost her again—lost her more cruelly. Even while close beside him, the richness of her beauty the glance of her eyes, the touch of her trailing dress, the gleam of the diamonds on her hair, heightened her loveliness and heightened his passion, till the night seemed full of wild tumult to him, of fierce delight, and of as fiery a pain, there was still on him that deadly nameless sense of some impending loss. She was nothing to him, worse than nothing, if she were not what he believed her. Alas, where was there ever man or woman who reached the spiritualised standard of an idealic love?
The lustre and splendour of the chamber, the artistic mingling of colour, the rich wines, the dreamy perfumes, the scented narcotics, these were all, he knew, the studied auxiliaries of a woman whose science was to beguile. But he dashed the accursed suspicion from him as quickly as it rose; he had sworn to believe in her, he would believe in her.
When she at last rose and left the dinner-table, her guests rose too, and followed her. A timepiece was striking twelve when they entered the salon.
"We have been long enough at dinner to satisfy ​Brillat-Savarin!" said Idalia, glancing at it. "Do you like cards, Sir Fulke?"
"I think no man could say honestly he did not, though it is the most dangerous of pastimes," he answered her, with a smile. "I have seen its evils in South America, where, as in Pizarro's time^ the old proverb still holds good, and they 'game away the sun before it rises.'"
"Many do that over other things than play, and before they know what their sun is worth!" she said, with that profound sadness which now and then chequered her careless brilliance with so dark a shadow. "We will have some baccarat, then. I am fond of play—when it is high enough."
"I should not have thought that."
She looked at him with a smile; she knew his reasons as well as though he had uttered them; there was something of irony, more of melancholy in the smile.
"No? But it is true all the same. Why should it not be? High play is excitement, and it whirls thought away."
"But you, should hare no thoughts that are pain."
"Those are idle words! There are few lives without pain, there are none without reproach."
​She turned from him with something of impatience, and as her Albanians wheeled the card-table nearer, sank into her couch, drawing some cards to her. She looked a woman to lean over a balcony in a starlit Southern night, and listen to a poet B cancion, or a lover's whimper stealing up through the murmurs of the leaves with the reverent worship of Petrarca; not one to need the feverish excitation of the gamester's reckless hazards. Who was she? what was she? this mystery whom men called Idalia? he wondered ceaselessly in eager unrest.
The baccarat commenced.
She played with the skill of her country, if that country were Greece, as her name implied; played like one accustomed to control chance by proficiency: but also with that alternate listlessness and eagerness which marks those who seek it as a distraction from those who crave it out of avarice. It was its excitement that was grateful to her, the rapid changes and chances. When she lost, she lost with an absolute indifference, and she staked her gold with a lavish extravagance that seemed to disdain speculation. Once or twice Erceldoune almost thought that she sought to guide the success of the hazard towards himself; if so, she succeeded; ​he won considerably, to his own displeasure, and she did not. Over and over again, when the current of chance ran for her, she lost it, either listlessly, with that careless scornful weariness peculiar to her, or with a recklessness that made her throw large sums away while she laughed over a bonmot. Two hours passed rapidly in the whirl of the game, leaving him winner of some heavy sums. Her eyes rested on him a moment, on the dark soldier-like grandeur of his head, which the rich colours and light of the room behind him threw up, as a noble Spanish head by Murillo might be thrown up on an illuminated background of gold and scarlet; then, at a slight pause in the game, she rose, sweeping her laces about her.
"Play on by yourselves, mes amis, as long as you will. I am constant to nothing—the privilege of a woman!—and I shall take a cup of coffee."
They all rose, as of course she knew that they would, and gathered about her, while two Nubians brought round trays of Mocha and bonbons. It had been her caprice that Erceldoune should be a gainer by the baccarat, and she had secured her point without any semblance of effort. The expression used by more than one to her concerning him, had impressed her with the idea that ​his necessities for money were far greater than they were.
Taking their coffee, they stood about her by the marble basin of the fountain. As the night grew late, as the wine and the incense and her constant presence added heat to their mutual rivalry, the bands of courtesy began to loosen, the instinctive jealousy that was rife among them began to seethe up in covert words and bitter ironies. Erceldoune resented their presence, they resented his; even the bright soft harmony always characteristic of Victor Vane began to show a gleam of constraint and impatience beneath it. Any watcher might have seen that it needed but very slight provocation, a very little more licence, to remove the curb that lay on them, and to let their enmity break into feud, mere strangers though they were to one another. She saw this, but it excited in her no passing agitation even, no thought of difficulty; she was used to see the strongest tempests at riot, and to control them, if she cared to do so, with a glance or a word; often she let them destroy themselves by their own violence. Now she left them and ran her hands over the keys of the grand piano which stood near the fountain, and with hardly a chord of prelude sang a rich Romaic ode, ​a mountain song with the old war-fire of Hellas in it. Her voice was of an exquisite beauty, highly cultivated and eloquent as any Pasta's, and it rang through the silence, throbbing on the air, and echoing far out to the night, where it was answered by the beating of the waves and the music of the nightingales among the roses. Those round her were stilled as by a sudden spell. She sang on, scarcely pausing, grand, mournful, impassioned chants, now Romaic, now Sicilian, now Venetian; songs of the nations, of the poets, of the hours of freedom, of the glories that were gone from Hellas and from Rome; songs of a profound pathos, of an eternal meaning. Neither Mozart nor Beethoven ever gave richer melodies than were those poems brought from the past, from the peoples, from the heart of dying nations, and from the treasures of their perished liberties.
Erceldoune leant against the white shaft of the marble walls, with his head bent; music always had power over him, and it gave her back all the divinity of his dreams, all the power of his lost ideal. Never, since the first moment when she had stooped to him with that one word "You!" had he seen her look as she looked now; those were the eyes that had bent above him with an angel's pity, when he had ​lain dying in the sunlight. Anything of her empire that had been hazarded in the past few hours she recovered tenfold; anything of abhorrent doubt that had stolen into his loyalty and faith to her, was swept away and forgotten.
He believed in her—he worshipped her! Not less so, when with a shook of surprise, and all the Border-blood warming in him, he heard her sing the Scottish sonnet, beautiful and living still as the waters of the Esk, by which it was written:
Sleep, silence' child, sweet father of soft rest,
Prince, whose approach peace to all mortals brings,
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings,
Sole comforter of minds that are opprest,
Lo! by thy charming rod all breathing things
Lie slumbering with forgetfulness possest.
The words, only the sweeter for the lingering softness of the foreign accent, came to his ear like the breath of his mountain air over the heather; as they died off the air he leaned eagerly forward:
"You know onr poems? You believe that beauty may come even out of our rugged glens?"
"Surely every one knows Drummond? The gentle Cavalier who died of his Master's death? You most often have seen Hawthornden, I suppose?"
​"It was my favourite haunt in my boyhood, though I believe I thought more of the birds I shot in the glen, and the water-fowls of the Esk, than of Drummond himself at that time."
"And yet there was Patria in every line of your face when you heard his sonnet just now," she said, with a smile.
"Ah! you know that Pope says,
'A Scot would fight for "Christ's Kirk o' the Green."'
To hear any of the old ballads is like hearing a trumpet-call; besides—Drummond's words on your lips! I cannot tell you what they were to me."
He paused abruptly, the silence more eloquent than any words could have been.
"You have never heard me speak English," she said, carelessly. "In truth, if you will pardon me, it is the language I like least. Its low Dutch, with all the exotic additions that have grown on it, is too hard for my lips; and I have rarely had occasion to use what knowledge I possess of it. Apropos of Scottish poetry, are you descended from the Rhymer?"
"We believe him to have been of the same race; but what is known of him is so enveloped in legend, that it is hard to trace. Thomas himself has grown ​almost mythical, though 'Syr Tristam' is immortal."
"Yes! because Sjr Tristam's folly is repeated by all men, through all ages."
"Folly? It merits a better name; it was, at least, fidelity?"
"Folly! Fidelity! They are synonyms for love. L'un vaut l'autre."
"Would you never, then, believe in passion as enduring as Tristam's?"
"For Ysonde, who is another man's wife? Oh yes! that is a very common feature. The love is so charming because it is forbidden!"
The evening was very still; the stars shining in myriads above the cypress and ilex woods, the heavy odours of roses and basilica on the air, and through the boughs of the cedars silvery gleams and flashes of the phosphorescent water. She left her seat as she spoke, and went out on to the terrace, and leaned a moment over the marble wall.
"How cool, how tranquil! And we spend such a night over hot wines, and idle jests, and feverish play!"
To his heart, to his lips, rose words in unison with that sweetness of the night, born from the intoxication of the hour: as though she felt them ​ere they were uttered, and would have them remain unspoken, she leant slightly towards him.
"Go home by yourself—with none of them, if they invite you. I don't mean," she added, with a laugh, "because they will knock you down to steal your winnings! They are not so low as that—yet."
The whisper was low and very rapid; surprise was the dominant feeling that it awoke in him, joined with something of a vivid wondering delight—she thought of his welfare!
"Your wish is my law," he answered her. "Do with my life what you will—it is yours."
"No. Not mine. It is a noble trust; never give it rashly."
There was a step beside them.
"A beautiful night, indeed/' said Victor Vane.
"A picture of Gherardo, and a poem of Hafiz! Certainly we never know what stars are till we come to the East."
"Never," said Idalia, turning to him; "and now yon may return to Stamboul by their light. After their poetry come their practical uses. I shall dismiss you all now; I am tired. Good night!"
Lightly as the words were spoken, eagerly as they longed to dispute the dismissal, unscrupulous, ​at least, as were some of those about her, all were constrained to obey her command—all were powerless to remain in her presence. Erceldoune was the first to accept her dismissal; he would not offer her even so much insult as would have laid in hesitation, and he took his farewell of her instantly and almost in silence.
Vane followed him with his glance."
"Why have you taken to patronise that Border moss-trooper, madame?" he asked, with a slight satirical laugh. "He is nothing but a courier, and has only an owl's roost at home that foxes burrow in, and cobwebs keep furnished. He is a rough rider and a wild shikari, nothing else; they are odd titles to your preference."
She looked him steadily in the eyes:
"He is a frank and gallant gentleman; that is, perhaps, as strange a one! It may be odd that I should care to see an honest man by way of variety; but—since it is my caprice, harm him at your peril."
Her guests were gone.
In solitude she sank down in the depths of a couch, with the light still playing on the diamonds in her hair, and her eyes watching the ​fall of the showering spray into the basin of the fountain, where scarlet roses swayed into the lily-laden waters. She gave a weary, restless sigh as she thrust back the bright masses of her hair farther from her temples, and, leaning her cheek on her hand, gazed absently into the glancing surface. There was something of release, something of regret, something of self-reproach in her attitude and in her thoughts; though these were checked by and mingled with a careless ironic triumph, and a royal habit of command and of disdain.
"Have I done more wrong?" she said, half aloud, while her proud head fell. "Greater wrong than ever! He is loyal and lion-hearted—a brave chivalrous gentleman: he should not come amongst us! The others can play at diamond cut diamond; the others are fairly armed, and have but their weapons turned against them. But he is of different mould: he will suffer—he will suffer terribly!"