IN A WINTER CITY 
 
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IN A WINTER CITY 
 
 A SKETCH 
 
 BY QUID A, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 ' PUCK ' ' SIGNA ' ' TRICOTRIN ' ' TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES ' ETC. 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS 
 1899 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODB AND CO., NKW-STREET SQUARE 
 LONDON 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 FLORALIA was once a city of great fame. It 
 stands upon an historical river. It is adorned 
 with all that the Arts can assemble of beauty, 
 of grace, and of majesty. Its chronicles blaze 
 with heroical deeds and with the achievements 
 of genius. Great men have been bred within its 
 walls ; men so great that the world has never 
 seen their like again. 
 
 Floralia, in her liberties, in her citizens, in he* 
 
 and painters and sculptors, once upon a 
 
 B 
 
 r 430 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 time had few rivals, perhaps, indeed, no equals, 
 upon earth. 
 
 By what strange irony of fate, by what 
 singular cynical caprice of accident, has this 
 fairest of cities, with her time-honoured towers 
 lifted to her radiant skies, hecome the universal 
 hostelry of cosmopolitan fashion and of fashion- 
 able idleness ? Sad vicissitudes of fallen fortunes ! 
 to such base uses do the greatest come. 
 
 It is Belisarius turned croupier to a gaming- 
 table ; it is Caesar selling cigars and news- 
 papers ; it is Apelles drawing for the " Albums 
 pour Eire ; " it is Pindar rhyming the couplets 
 for " Fleur de The ;" it is Praxiteles designing 
 costumes for a Calico-ball ; it is Phidias form- 
 ing the poses of a ballet ! 
 
 Perhaps the mighty ghosts of mediaeval Flo- 
 ralia do walk, sadly and ashamed, by midnight 
 under the shadow of its exquisite piles of marble 
 and of stone. If they do, nobody sees them : 
 the cigarette smoke is too thick. 
 
 As for the modern rulers of Floralia, they have 
 risen elastic and elated to the height of the situa- 
 tion, and have done their best and uttermost to de- 
 
A WINTER CITY. 
 
 grade their city into due accordance with her pre- 
 sent circumstances, and have destroyed as much 
 as they dared of her noble picturesqueness and 
 ancient ways. They have tacked on to her vent 
 rable palaces and graceful towers, stucco man- 
 sions and straight hideous streets, and staring 
 walls covered with advertisements, and barren 
 boulevards studded with toy trees that are 
 cropped as soon as they presume to grow a 
 leaf, and have striven all they know to fit her 
 for her fortunes, as her inn-keepers, when 
 they take an antique palace, hasten to fit up a 
 smoking-room, and, making a paradise of gas 
 jets and liqueurs, write over it " II Bar Ameri- 
 cano." 
 
 It is considered very clever to adapt oneself 
 to one's fortunes ; and if so, the rulers of Flo- 
 ralia are very clever indeed ; only the stucco 
 and the straight streets and the frightful 
 boulevards cost money, and Floralia has no 
 money and a very heavy and terrible debt ; and 
 whether it be really worth while to deface a 
 most beautiful and artistic city, and ruin youi 
 nobles and gentry, and grind down your artizans 
 
 B a 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 and peasants, and make your whole province 
 impoverished and ill-content for the mere sake 
 of pleasing some strangers by the stucco and 
 the hoardings that their eyes are used to at 
 home ; well, that perhaps may be an open 
 question. 
 
 The Lady Hilda Vorarlberg had written thus 
 far when she got tired, left off, and looked out 
 of the window on to the mountain-born and poet- 
 hymned river of Floralia. She had an idea that 
 she would write a novel ; she was always going 
 to do things that she never did do. 
 
 After all they were not her own ideas that 
 she had written ; but only those of a Floralian, 
 the Duca della Eocca, whom she had met the 
 night before. But then the ideas of every- 
 body have been somebody else's beforehand, 
 Plato's, or Bion's, or Theophrastus's ; or your 
 favourite newspaper's ; and the Lady Hilda, al- 
 though she had been but two days in the Winter 
 City, had already in her first drive shuddered 
 at the stucco and the hoardings, and shivered 
 at the boulevards and the little shaven trees. 
 For she was a person of very refined and fasti- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 dious taste, and did really know something about 
 the arts, and such persons suffer very acutely 
 from what the peculiar mind of your modern 
 municipalities calls, in its innocence, " improve- 
 ments." 
 
 The Lady Hilda had been to a reception too 
 the night before, and had gone with the pre- 
 conceived conviction that a certain illustrious 
 Sovereign had not been far wrong when she 
 had called Floralia the Botany Bay of modern 
 society ; but then the Ludy Hilda was easily 
 bored, and not easily pleased, and liked very 
 few things, almost none ; she liked her horses, 
 she liked M. Worth, she liked bric-a-brac, she 
 liked her brother, Lord Clairvaux, and when she 
 came to think of it, well, that was really all. 
 
 The Lady Hilda was a beautiful woman, and 
 knew it ; she was dressed in the height of 
 fashion, i.e., like a mediaeval saint out of a 
 picture ; her velvet robe clung close to her, and 
 her gold belt, with its chains and pouch and 
 fittings, would not have disgraced Cellini's own 
 working; her hair was in a cloud in front and 
 in a club behind ; her figure was perfect : M. 
 
TN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Worth, who is accustomed to furnish figures as 
 well as clothes, had a great reverence for her; 
 in her, Nature, of whom generally speaking he 
 is disposed to think very poorly, did not need 
 his assistance ; he thought it extraordinary, but 
 as he could not improve her in that respect, hC 
 had to be content with draping Perfection, 
 which he did to perfection of course. 
 
 Her face also was left to nature, in a very 
 blamable degree for a woman of fashion. Her 
 friends argued to her that any woman, however 
 fair a skin she might have, must look washed 
 out without enamel or rouge at the least. But 
 the Lady Hilda, conscious of her own delicate 
 bloom, was obdurate on the point. 
 
 " I would rather look washed out than caked 
 over," she would reply: which was cruel but 
 conclusive. So she went into the world with- 
 out painting, and made them all look beside her 
 as if they had come out of a comic opera. 
 
 In everything else she was, however, as arti- 
 ficial as became her sex, her station, and her 
 century. 
 
 She was a very fortunate woman; at least 
 
TN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 society always said so. The Clairvaux people 
 were very terribly poor, though very noble and 
 mighty. She had been married at sixteen, 
 immediately on her presentation, to a great 
 European capitalist of nondescript nationality, who 
 had made an enormous fortune upon the Stock 
 Exchanges in ways that were never enquired into, 
 and this gentleman, whose wealth was as solid as 
 it sounded fabulous, had had the good taste to die 
 in the first months of their wedded life, leaving 
 her fifty thousand a year, and bequeathing the 
 rest of his money to the Prince Imperial. 
 Besides her large income she had the biggest 
 jewels, the choicest horses, the handsomest 
 house in London, the prettiest hotel in Paris, 
 &c., &c., &c. ; and she could very well afford to 
 have a fresh toilette a-day from her friend 
 Worth if she chose. Very often she did choose. 
 " What a lucky creature," said every other 
 woman: and so she was. But she would have 
 been still more so had she not been quite so 
 much bored. Boredom is the ill-natured pebble 
 that always will get in the golden slipper of thft 
 pilgrim of pleasure. 
 
6 IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 The Lady Hilda looked out of the window and 
 found it raining heavily. When the sky of Flo- 
 ralia does rain, it does it thoroughly, and gets 
 the disagreeable duty over, which is much more 
 merciful to mankind than the perpetual drizzle 
 and dripping of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, or 
 Middlesex. It was the rain that had made her 
 almost inclined to think she would write a novel ; 
 she was so tired of reading them. 
 
 She countermanded her carriage ; had some 
 more wood thrown on the fire ; and felt disposed 
 to regret that she had decided to winter here. She 
 missed all her bibelots, and all the wonderful shades 
 and graces of colour with which her own houses 
 were made as rich, yet as subdued in tone as any 
 old cloisonne enamel. She had the finest rooms, 
 here, in an hotel which had been the old palace of 
 Murat ; and she had sent for flowers to fill every 
 nook and corner of them, an order which Floralia 
 will execute for as many francs as any other city 
 would ask in napoleons. 
 
 But there is always a nakedness and a 
 gaudiness in the finest suites of any hotel; 
 and the Lady Hilda, though she had educated 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 little else, had so educated her eyes and her 
 taste that a criant bit of furniture hurt her as 
 the grating of a false quantity hurts a scholar. 
 She knew the value of greys and creams and 
 lavenders and olive greens and pale sea blues 
 and dead gold and oriental blendings. She 
 had to seat herself now in an arm-chair that was of 
 a brightness and newness in magenta brocade 
 that made her close her eyelids involuntarily to 
 avoid the horror of it, as she took up some letters 
 from female friends and wondered why they wrote 
 them, and took up a tale of Zola's and threw 
 it aside in disgust, and began to think that 
 she would go to Algeria, since her doctors had 
 agreed that her lungs would not bear the cold 
 of Paris this winter. 
 
 Only there was no art in Algeria and there 
 was plenty in Floralia, present and traditional, 
 and so far as a woman of fashion can demean 
 herself to think seriously of anj^thing beyond 
 dress and rivalry, she had in a way studied art 
 of all kinds, languidly indeed and perhaps super- 
 ficially, but still with some true understanding 
 of it; for, although she had done her best, as 
 
10 I/T A WINTER CITT. 
 
 became &femme comme ilfaut, to stifle the intel- 
 ligence she had been created with, she yet had 
 moments in which M. Worth did not seem 
 Jehovah, and in which Society scarcely appeared 
 the Alpha and Omega of human existence, as of 
 course they did to her when she was in her right 
 frame of mind. 
 
 " I shall go to Algeria or Home," she said to 
 herself: it rained pitilessly, hiding even the 
 bridges on the opposite side of the river; she 
 had a dreadful magenta-coloured chair, and the 
 window curtains were scarlet ; the letters were 
 on thin foreign paper and crossed ; the book was 
 unreadable ; at luncheon they had given her 
 horrible soup and a vol-au-vent that for all 
 flavour it possessed might have been made of 
 acorns, ship-biscuit and shalots ; and she had just 
 heard that her cousin the Countess de Caviare, 
 whom she never approved of, and who always bor- 
 rowed money of her, was coming also to the Hotel 
 Murat. It was not wonderful that she settled 
 in her own mind to leave Floralia as soon as she 
 had come to it. 
 
 It was four o'clock. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 11 
 
 She thought she would send round to the 
 bric-a-brac dealers, and tell them to bring her 
 what china and enamels and things they had in 
 their shops for her to look at; little that is 
 worth having ever comes into the market in 
 these days, save when private collections are 
 publicly sold ; she knew the Hotel Drouot and 
 Christie and Hanson's too well not to know that; 
 still it would be something to do. 
 
 Her hand was on the bell when one of her 
 servants entered. He had a card on a salver. 
 
 " Does Madame receive?" he asked, in some 
 trepidation, for do what her servants might they 
 generally did wrong ; when they obeyed her she 
 had almost invariably changed her mind before 
 her command could be executed, and when they 
 did not obey her, then the Clairvaux blood, 
 which was crossed with French and Russian, 
 and had been Norman to begin with, made 
 itself felt in her usually tranquil veins. 
 
 She glanced at the card. It might be a bric- 
 a-brac dealer's. 
 
 On it was written " Duca della Eocca." She 
 paused doubtfully some moments' 
 
12 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " It is raining very hard," she thought; then 
 gave a sign of assent. 
 
 Everybody wearied her after ten minutes ; still 
 when it was raining so hard 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 " THEY SAT," the great assassin who slays as 
 many thousands as ever did plague or cholera, 
 drink or warfare ; " they say," the thief of re- 
 putation, who steals, with stealthy step and 
 coward's mask, to filch good names away in the 
 dead dark of irresponsible calumny ; "they 
 say,*' a giant murderer, iron-gloved to slay you, 
 a fleet, elusive, vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, when 
 you would seize and choke it ; " they say," 
 mighty Thug though it be which strangles from 
 behind the purest victim, had not been ever 
 known to touch the Lady Hilda. 
 
 She seemed very passionless and cold ; and 
 no one ever whispered that she was not what 
 she seemed. Possibly she enjoyed so unusual 
 
H IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 an immunity, first, because she was so very 
 rich ; secondly, because she had many male 
 relations; thirdly, because women, whilst they 
 envied, were afraid of her. Anyway, her name was 
 altogether without reproach ; the only defect to 
 be found in her in the estimate of many of her 
 adorers. 
 
 Married without any wish of her own being 
 consulted, and left so soon afterwards mistress 
 of herself and of very large wealth, she had 
 remained altogether indifferent and insensible to 
 all forms of love. Other women fell in love in 
 all sorts of ways, feebly or forcibly, according 
 to their natures, but she never. 
 
 The passions she excited broke against her 
 serene contempt, like surf on a rocky shore. She 
 was the despair of all the " tueurs de femmes " 
 of Europe. 
 
 "Le mieux est 1'ennemi du bien," she said 
 to her brother once, when she had refused the 
 hereditary Prince of Deutschland ; "I can do 
 exactly as I like; I have everything I want; 
 I can follow all my own whims ; I am per- 
 fectly happy ; why ever should I alter all this ? 
 
IJV A WINTER CITY. 15 
 
 What could any man ever offer me that would 
 be better?" 
 
 Lord Clairvaux was obliged to grumble that 
 he did not know what any man could. 
 
 " Unless you were to care for the man," he 
 muttered shamefacedly. 
 
 "Oh! hi h!" said the Lady Hilda, with 
 the most prolonged delicate and eloquent inter- 
 jection of amazed scorn. 
 
 Lord Clairvaux felt that he had been as silly 
 and rustic as if he were a ploughboy. He was an 
 affectionate creature himself, in character very 
 like a Newfoundland dog, and had none of his 
 sister's talent and temperament; he loved her 
 dearly, but he was always a little afraid of her. 
 
 " Hilda don't say much to you, but she just 
 gives you a look ; and don't you sink into your 
 shoes ! " he said once to a friend. 
 
 He stood six feet three without the shoes, to 
 whose level her single glance could so patheti- 
 cally reduce him. 
 
 But except before herself, Lord Clairvaux, 
 in his shoes or out of them, was the bravest 
 and frankest gentleman that ever walked the 
 
16 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 earth; and the universal recollection of hirn 
 and of his unhesitating habit of " setting things 
 straight," probably kept so in awe the calumny- 
 makers, that he produced the miracle of a woman 
 who actually was blameless getting the credit of 
 being so. Usually snow is deemed black, and coal 
 is called swans-down, with that refreshing habit 
 of contrariety which alone saves society from 
 stagnation. 
 
 It never occurred to her what a tower of 
 strength for her honour was that good-looking, 
 good-tempered, stupid, big brother of her's, who 
 could not spell a trisyllable were it ever so, and 
 was only learned in racing stock and greyhound 
 pedigrees ; but she was fond of him in a cool 
 and careless way, as she might have been of a 
 big dog, and was prodigal in gifts to him of 
 great winners and brood mares. 
 
 She never went to stay with him at Broomsdon ; 
 she disliked his wife, her sister-in-law, and she was 
 always bored to death in English country houses, 
 where the men were out shooting all day, and 
 half asleep all the evening. The country people, 
 the salt of the earth in their own eyes, were in- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 17 
 
 fmitesinial as ants in hers. She detested drives 
 in pony-carriages, humdrum chit chat, and after- 
 noon tea in the library ; she did not care in the 
 least who had bagged how many brace ; the 
 details of fast runs with hounds were as horribly 
 tiresome to her as the boys home from Eton ; 
 and she would rather have gone a pilgrimage to 
 Lourdes than have descended to the ball, where 
 all sorts of nondescripts had to be asked, and the 
 dresses positively haunted her like ghosts. 
 
 Five years before, at Broomsden, she had 
 taken up her candlestick after three nights of 
 unutterable boredom between her sister-in-law 
 and a fat duchess, and had mentally vowed never 
 to return there. The vow she had kept, and she 
 had always seen Clairvaux in Paris, in London, 
 in Baden anywhere rather than in the home 
 of their childhood, towards which she had no 
 tenderness of sentiment, but merely recollections 
 of the fierce tyrannies of many German 
 governesses. 
 
 She would often buy him a colt out of the La- 
 grange or Lafitte stables ; and always send half 
 Boissier's and Siraudin's shops to his children 
 
18 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 at Christmas time. That done, she considered 
 nothing more could be expected of her : it was 
 certainly not necessary that she should bore her- 
 self. 
 
 To spend money was an easy undemonstrative 
 manner of acknowledging the ties of nature, 
 which pleased and suited her. Perhaps she 
 would have been capable of showing her affec- 
 tion in nobler and more self-sacrificing ways ; but 
 then there was nothing in her circumstances to 
 call for that kind of thing ; no trouble ever came 
 nigh her ; and the chariot of her life rolled as 
 smoothly as her own victoria a huit ressorts. 
 
 For the ten years of her womanhood the Lady 
 Hilda had had the command of immense wealth. 
 Anything short of that seemed to her abject 
 poverty. She could theorise about making her- 
 self into Greuze or Gainsboro' pictures in serge 
 or dimity; but, in fact, she could not imagine 
 herself without all the black sables and silver 
 fox, the velvets arid silks, the diamonds and 
 emeralds, the embroideries and laces that mad^ 
 her a thing which Titian would have worshipped. 
 
 Slie could not imagine herself for an instant 
 
TN A WINTER CITY. 19 
 
 without power of limitless command, limitless 
 caprice, ceaseless indulgence, boundless patron- 
 age, and all the gratifications of whim and will 
 which go with the possession of a great fortune 
 and the enjoyment of an entire irresponsibility. 
 
 She was bored and annoyed very often indeed 
 because Pleasure is not as inventive a god as 
 he ought to be, and his catalogue is very soon 
 run through ; but it never by any chance oc- 
 curred to her that it might be her money which 
 bored her. 
 
 When, on a very dreary day early in November, 
 Lady Hilda, known by repute all over Europe as 
 the proudest, handsomest, coldest woman in the 
 world, and famous as an elegante in every fashion- 
 able city, arrived at the Hotel Murat, in the 
 town of Floralia, and it was known that she had 
 come to establish herself there for the winter (un- 
 less, indeed, she changed her mind, which was pro- 
 bable), the stir in the city was extraordinary. She 
 brought with her several servants, several carriage 
 horses, immense jewel cases, and a pug dog. She 
 was the great arrival of the season. 
 
 There was a Grand Duchess of Dresden, in- 
 
 c 2 
 
20 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 deed, who came at the same time, but she brought 
 no horses; she hired her coupe from a livery- 
 stable, and her star, notwithstanding its royalty, 
 paled in proportion. Besides, the Grand Duchess 
 was a very little, shabby, insignificant person, who 
 wore black stuff dresses, and a wig without any 
 art in it. She was music-mad, and Wagner was 
 her prophet. The Club took no account of her. 
 
 There is a club in Floralia, nay, it is the 
 Club ; all other clubs being for purposes gymnas- 
 tic, patriotic, theatric, or political, and out of 
 society altogether. 
 
 The Club is very fond of black-balling, and 
 gives very odd reasons for doing so, instead of 
 the simple and true one, that it wants to keep 
 itself to itself. It has been known to object 
 to one man because his hair curled, and to an- 
 other because he was the son of a king, and to 
 another because his boots were not made in Paris. 
 Be its reasons, however, good, bad, or indifferent, 
 it pleases itself; by its fiat newly-arrived women 
 are exalted to the empyrean, or perish in obscu- 
 rity, and its members are the cream of masculine 
 Floralia, and spend all fine afternoons on the 
 
IN A WINTER CITY 21 
 
 steps and the pavement, blocking up the passage 
 way in the chief street, and criticising all equi- 
 pages and their occupants. 
 
 When the Lady Hilda's victoria, with the two 
 blacks, and the white and black liveries, swept 
 past the Club, there was a great stir in these 
 philosophers of the stones. Most knew her by 
 sight very well ; two or three knew her personally, 
 and these fortunate few, who had the privilege to 
 raise their hats as that carriage went by, rose im- 
 mediately in the esteem of their fellows. 
 
 " Je n'ai jamais rien connu de si e'patant," said 
 the French Due de St. Louis, who belongs to a 
 past generation, but is much more charming and 
 witty than anything to be found in the present 
 one. 
 
 " Twelve hundred and fifty thousand francs 
 a-year," murmured the Marchese Sampierdareno, 
 with a sigh. He was married himself. 
 
 " Here is your ' affaire,' Paolo," said Don 
 Carlo Maremma to a man next him. 
 
 The Duca della Bocca, to whom he spoke, 
 stroked his moustache, and smiled a little. 
 
 " She is a very beautiful person," he answered ; 
 
22 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " I have seen her before at the Tuileries and at 
 Trouville, but I do not know her at all. I was 
 never presented." 
 
 " That will arrange itself easily," said the Due 
 de St. Louis, who was one of those who had 
 raised their hats ; " Maremma is perfectly right ; 
 it is in every way the very thing for you. Moi, 
 je m'en charge." 
 
 The Duca della Rocca shrugged his shoulders 
 a very little, and lighted a fresh cigar. But his 
 face grew grave, and he looked thoughtfully 
 after the black horses, and the white and black 
 liveries. 
 
 At the English reception that night, which 
 the Lady Hilda disdainfully likened in her own 
 mind to a penal settlement, M. de St. Louis, 
 whom she knew very well, begged to be permitted 
 to present to her his friend the Duca della 
 Rocca. 
 
 She was dressed like a mediaeval saint of a 
 morning ; at night she was a mediaeval princess. 
 
 She had feuille morte velvet slashed with the 
 palest of ambers ; a high fraise ; sleeves of the 
 renaissance; pointed shoes, and a great many 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 jewels. Delia Rocca thought she might have 
 stepped down out of a Giorgione canvas, and ven- 
 tured to tell her so. He gave her the carte du 
 pays of the penal settlement around her, and 
 talked to her more seriously for some considerable 
 time. Himself and the Due de St. Louis were 
 the only people she deigned to take any notice of; 
 and she went away in an hour, or rather less, 
 leaving a kind of flame from her many jewels be- 
 hind her, and a frozen sense of despair in the 
 hearts of the women, who had watched her, 
 appalled yet fascinated. 
 
 " Mais quelle femme impossible ! " said Delia 
 Rocca, as he went out into the night air. 
 
 " Impossible ! mais comment done ? " said the 
 Due de St. Louis, with vivacity and some anger. 
 
 The Due de St. Louis worshipped her, as every 
 year of his life he worshipped three hundred and 
 sixty-five ladies. 
 
 " Impossible ! " echoed Delia Rocca, with a 
 cigar in his mouth. 
 
 Nevertheless, the next day, when the rain was 
 falling in such torrents that no female creature 
 was likely to be anywhere but before her fire, he 
 
24 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 called at the Hotel Murat, and inquired if 
 Miladi were visible, and being admitted, as better 
 than nothing, as she would have admitted the 
 bric-a-brac man, followed the servant upstairs, 
 and walked into an atmosphere scented with some 
 three hundred pots of tea roses, lilies of the val- 
 ley, and hothouse heliotrope. 
 
 " Ah, ah ! you have been to see her. Quite 
 right," said the Due de St. Louis, meeting him 
 as he came down the steps of the hotel in the 
 rain, when it was half-past five by the clock. " I 
 am going also so soon as I have seen Salvareo 
 at the Club about the theatricals ; it will not take 
 me a moment ; get into my cab, you are going 
 there too ? How is Miladi ? You found her 
 harming ? " 
 
 " She was in a very bad humour," replied 
 Delia Rocca, closing the cab door on himself. 
 
 " The more interesting for you to put her in a 
 good one." 
 
 " Would either good or bad last ten minutes ? 
 you know her : I do not, but I should doubt 
 it." 
 
 The Due arranged the fur collar of his coat. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 25 
 
 " She is a woman, and rich ; too rich, if one 
 can say so. Of course she has her caprices " 
 
 Delia Rocca shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "She is very handsome. But she does not 
 interest me." 
 
 The Due smiled, and glanced at him. 
 
 " Then you probably interested her. It is 
 much better you should not be interested. Men 
 who are interested may blunder/' 
 
 " She is vain she is selfish she is arrogant," 
 said Delia Hocca, with great decision. 
 
 " Oh ho ! all that you find out already ? You 
 did not amuse her long ? " 
 
 " C'est une femme exageree en tout," pur- 
 sued Delia Rocca, disregarding. 
 
 " No ! Exaggeration is vulgar is bad taste. 
 Her taste is excellent unexceptionable " 
 
 " Exageree en tout!" repeated Delia Rocca, 
 with much emphasis. " Dress jewels habits 
 temper everything. She had three hundred 
 pots of flowers in her room ! " 
 
 " Flower-pots, pooh ! that is English. It 
 
 is very odd," pursued the Due pensively, "but 
 they really do like the smell of flowers." 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Only because they cost so much to rear in 
 their fogs. If they were common as with us, they 
 would throw them out of the window as we do." 
 
 " Nevertheless, send her three hundred pots 
 more. II faut commencer la cour, mon cher." 
 
 Delia Kocca looked out into the rain. 
 
 " I have no inclination I dislike a woman of 
 the world." 
 
 The Due chuckled a little. 
 
 " Ah, ah ! since when, caro mio ? " 
 
 " There is no simplicity there is no inno- 
 cence there is no sincerity " 
 
 '"Bah!" said the Due, with much disdain; 
 " I do not know where you have got those new- 
 ideas, nor do I think they are your own at all. 
 Have you fallen in love with a * jeune Mees ' with 
 apple-red cheeks and sweatmeats in her pocket ? 
 Simplicity innocence sincerity. Very pretty. 
 Our old friend of a million vaudevilles, L'Ingenue. 
 We all know her. What is she in real truth ? 
 A swaddled bundle of Ignorance. Cut the swad- 
 dling band ugh ! and Ignorance flies to Know- 
 ledge as Eve did, only Ignorance does not want 
 to know good and evil : the evil contents her : 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 27 
 
 she stops short at that. Yes yes, L'Ingenue 
 will marry you that she may read Zola and 
 Belot ; that she may go to La Biche au Bois ; 
 that she may smoke cigars with young men; 
 that she may have her dresses cut half-way 
 down her spine ; that she may romp like a half 
 drunk harlot in all the cotillons of the year! 
 Whereas your woman of the world, if well 
 chosen " 
 
 " Will have done all these things beforehand 
 at some one else's expense, and will have tired of 
 
 them, or not have tired ; of the display of 
 
 spine and of the cotillon she will certainly never 
 have tired unless she be fifty " 
 
 " That is not precisely what I mean," said the 
 Due, caressing his small white moustache. " No ; 
 I said well chosen well chosen. What it can 
 matter to you whether your wife smokes with 
 young men, or reads bad novels, or romps till 
 breakfast, I do not see myself. There is a 
 natural destiny for husbands. The unwise fret 
 over it the wise profit by it. But considering 
 that you dislike these things in your own wife, 
 however much you like and admire them in the 
 
28 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 wives of other persons, I would still say, avoid 
 our friend of a million vaudevilles la petite Mees 
 de seize ans. Ignorance is not innocence, it is 
 a great mistake to suppose that it even secures 
 it. Your Mees would seize Belot and Zola a la 
 reveille des noces . Miladi yonder, for in- 
 stance, when they come to her from her book- 
 seller's, throws them aside, unread " 
 
 " There was a book of Zola's on her table to- 
 day " 
 
 " I would bet ten thousand francs that she 
 had not gone beyond the title-page/' interrupted 
 the Due, with petulance. " TASTE, mon cher 
 Delia Rocca, is the only sure guarantee in these 
 matters. Women, believe me, never have any 
 principle. Principle is a backbone, and no wo- 
 man except bodily ever possesses any back- 
 bone. Their priests and their teachers and their 
 mothers fill them with doctrines and convention- 
 alities all things of mere word and wind. No 
 woman has any settled principles ; if she have any 
 vague ones, it is the uttermost she ever reaches,, 
 and those can always be overturned by any man 
 who has any influence over her. But Taste is 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 29 
 
 another matter altogether. A woman whose taste 
 ts excellent is preserved from all eccentricities 
 and most follies. You never see a woman of 
 good sense afficher her improprieties or adver- 
 tise her liaisons as women of vulgarity do. Nay,. 
 if her taste he perfect, though she have weak- 
 nesses, I doubt if she will ever have vices. 
 Vice will seem to her like a gaudy colour, or 
 too much gold braid, or very large plaids, or 
 buttons as big as saucers, or anything else such 
 as vulgar women like. Fastidiousness, at any 
 rate, is very good postiche for modesty : it is 
 always decent, it can never be coarse. Good 
 taste, inherent and ingrained, natural and culti- 
 vated, cannot alter. Principles ouf ! they go on 
 and off like a slipper ; but good taste is inde- 
 structible ; it is a compass that never errs. If 
 your wife have it well, it is possible she may be 
 false to you ; she is human, she is feminine ; but 
 she will never make you ridiculous, she will never 
 compromise you, and she will not romp in a 
 cotillon till the morning sun shows the paint o 
 her face washed away in the rain of her perspira- 
 tion. Virtue is, after all, as Mme. de Montes- 
 
30 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 pan said, une chose tout purement ge*ographique. 
 It varies with the hemisphere like the human 
 skin and the human hair ; what is vile in one 
 latitude is harmless in another. No philosophic 
 person can put any trust in a thing which 
 merely depends upon climate; hut, Good 
 Taste " 
 
 The cab stopped at the club, and the Due in 
 his disquisition. 
 
 " Va faire la cour," he said, paternally, to his 
 companion as they went through the doors of 
 their Cercle. " I can assure you, mon cher, that 
 the taste of Miladi is perfect." 
 
 " In dress, perhaps," assented Delia Rocca. 
 
 " In everything. Va faire la cour." 
 
 Paolo, Duca della Rocca, was a very handsome 
 man, of the finest and the most delicate type of 
 beauty ; he was very tall, and he carried himself 
 with stateliness and grace ; his face was grave, 
 pensive, and poetic ; in the largest assembly people 
 who were strangers to him always looked at him, 
 and asked, " Who is that ? " 
 
 He was the head of a family, very ancient and 
 distinguished, but very impoverished ; in wars and 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 31 
 
 civil war all their possessions had drifted away 
 from them piece by piece, hence, he was a great 
 noble on a slender pittance. It had always been 
 said to him, and of him, as a matter of course, that 
 he would mend his position by espousing a large 
 fortune, and he had been brought up to regard 
 such a transaction in the light of a painful but 
 inevitable destiny. 
 
 But although he was now thirty-eight years 
 of age, he had never seen, amongst the many 
 young persons pointed out to him as possessing 
 millions, anyone to whom he could prevail upon 
 himself to sell his old name and title. 
 
 The Great Kepublic inspires, as it is well 
 known, a passion for social and titular distinc- 
 tions in its enterprising sons and daughters, 
 which is, to the original flunkeyism of the mother 
 country, as a Gloire de Dijon to a dog-rose, as a 
 Reine Claude to a common blue plum. Nor are 
 the pretty virgins whom the Atlantic wafts across, 
 in any way afflicted with delicacy or hesitation 
 if they can but see their way to getting what 
 they want ; and they strike the bargain, or their 
 mothers do so for them, with a cynical candour 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 as to their object which would almost stagger the 
 manager of a Bureau de Mariage. 
 
 Many and various were the gold-laden damsels 
 of the West, who were offered, or offered them- 
 selves, to him. But he could not induce himself ; 
 his pride, or his taste, or his hereditary in- 
 stincts, were too strong for him to he able to 
 ally himself with rag and bone merchants from 
 New York, or oil- strikers from Pennsylvania, or 
 speculators from Wall Street. 
 
 No doubt it was very weak of him ; a dozen 
 men of the great old races of Europe married 
 thus every year, but Paolo della Bocca loved his 
 name, as a soldier does his flag, and he could not 
 brave the idea of possibly transmitting to his 
 children traits and taints of untraceable or ignoble 
 inherited influences. 
 
 Over and over again he allowed himself to be 
 the subject of discussion amongst those ladies 
 whose especial pleasure it is to arrange this 
 sort of matters; but when from discussion it 
 had been ready to pass into action, he had always 
 murmured to his match-making friend 
 
 " A little more time ! next year." 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 33 
 
 "Bah! ce n'est qu'une affaire de notaire," 
 said his special protectress in these matters, a still 
 charming Kussian ex-ambassadress, who con- 
 stantly wintered in Floralia, and who, having had 
 him as a lover when he was twenty and she was 
 thirty, felt quite a maternal interest in him 
 still as to his marriage and prospects. 
 
 Delia Eocca was too much a man of the world 
 and of his country not to be well aware that she 
 spoke the truth; it was only an affair for the 
 notaries, like any other barter ; still he put it off ; 
 it would have to be done one day, but there was no 
 haste, there would always be heiresses willing 
 and eager to become the Duchess della Eocca, 
 Princess of Palmarola, and Marchioness of Tavig- 
 nano, as his roll of old titles ran. 
 
 And so year by year had gone by, and he 
 vaguely imagined that he would in time meet what 
 he wanted without any drawbacks : a delusion 
 common to everyone, and realised by no one. 
 
 Meanwhile, the life he led, if somewhat pur- 
 poseless, was not disagreeable ; being an Italian, 
 he could live like a gentleman, with simplicity, 
 and no effort to conceal his lack of riches ; 
 
 
34 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 nor did he think his dignity imperilled because he 
 did not get into debt for the sake of display ; he 
 would dine frugally without thinking himself dis- 
 honoured; refuse to join in play without feeling 
 degraded; and look the finest gentleman in 
 Europe without owing his tailor a bill. 
 
 For other matters he was somewhat dtsoeuvre. 
 He had fought, like most other young men of 
 that time, in the campaign of '59, but the result 
 disappointed him; and he was at heart too 
 honest and too disdainful to find any place for 
 himself in that struggle between cunning and cor- 
 ruption, of which the political life of our regene- 
 rated Italy is at present composed. Besides, he 
 was also too indolent. So for his amusement he 
 went to the world, and chiefly to the world of 
 great ladies ; and for his duties made sufficient for 
 himself out of the various interests of the neglect- 
 td old estates which he had inherited ; for the 
 rest he was a man of the world ; that he had a 
 perfect manner, all society knew ; whether he had 
 character as well, nobody cared ; that he had a 
 heart at all, was only known to himself, his pea- 
 santry, and a few women. 
 
CHAPTEB m. 
 
 THE next morning the sun shone brilliantly ; 
 the sky was blue; the wind was a very gentle breeze 
 from the sea ; Lady Hilda's breakfast chocolate 
 was well made ; the tea-roses and the heliotrope 
 almost hid the magenta furniture and the gilded 
 plaster consoles, and the staring mirrors. They 
 had sent her in a new story of Octave Feuillet : 
 M. de St. Louis had forwarded her a new 
 volume of charming verse by Sully Prudhomme, 
 only sold on the Boulevards two days before, 
 with a note of such grace and wit that it ought 
 to have been addressed to Elysium for Mine, de 
 Sevigne ; the post brought her only one letter, 
 which announced that her brother, Lord Clair- 
 vaux, would come thither to please her, after the 
 
 2 
 
36 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Newmarket Spring Meeting, or perhaps before, 
 since he had to see " Major Fridolin " in Paris. 
 
 On the whole, the next morning Lady Hilda, 
 looking out of the hotel window, decided to 
 stay in Floralia. 
 
 She ordered her carriage out early, and drove 
 hither and thither to enjoy tranquilly the innu- 
 merahle treasures of all the arts in which the 
 city of Floralia is so rich. 
 
 A Monsignore whom she knew well, learned, 
 
 
 
 without pedantry, and who united the more 
 vivacious accomplishments of the virtuoso to the 
 polished softness of the churchman, accompanied 
 her. The Clairvaux people from time immemorial 
 had heen good Catholics. 
 
 Lady Hilda for her part never troubled her 
 head about those things, but she thought un- 
 belief was very bad form, and that to throw 
 over your family religion was an impertinence 
 to } r our ancestors. Some things in the cere- 
 monials of her church grated on her aesthetic 
 and artistic ideas, but then these things she 
 attributed to the general decadence of the whole 
 age in taste. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 37 
 
 Her Monsignore went home to luncheon with 
 her, and made himself as agreeable as a courtly 
 churchman always is to every one ; and afterwards 
 she studied the Penal Settlement more closely by 
 calling on those leaders of it whose cards lay in 
 a heap in her anteroom, and amused herself 
 with its mind and manners, its attributes and 
 antecedents. 
 
 " After all, the only people in any country that 
 one can trust oneself to know are the natives of 
 it," she said to herself, as she went to the weekly 
 " day " of the infinitely charming Marchesa 
 del Trasimene, nata Da Bolsena, where she met 
 Delia Roeca and M. de St. Louis, as everybody 
 meets everybody else, morning, afternoon, and 
 evening, fifty times in the twenty-four hours in 
 Floralia, the results being antipathy or sympathy 
 in a fatal degree. 
 
 In her girations she herself excited extreme 
 attention and endless envy, especially in the 
 breasts of those unhappy outsiders whom she 
 termed the Penal Settlement. 
 
 There was something about her ! Worth 
 Pingat and La Ferriere dressed the Penal Settle- 
 
38 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 ment, or it said they did. Carlo Maremma 
 always swore that there was a little dressmaker 
 who lived opposite his stable who could have 
 told sad truths ahout manv of these Paris-bom 
 toilettes ; but no doubt Maremma was wrong, 
 because men know nothing about these things, 
 and are not aware that a practised eye can tell 
 the sweep of Worth's scissors under the shoulder- 
 blades as surely as a connoisseur recognises the 
 hand of Boule or Vemis Martin on a cabinet or 
 an etui. At any rate, the Penal Settlement 
 swore it was adorned by Worth, Pingat and La 
 Ferriere in all the glories and eccentricities 
 imaginable of confections, unies and mtlangees, 
 Directoire and Premier Empire, Juive and 
 Louis Quinze; and if talking about a theory 
 could prove it, certainly they proved that they 
 bore all Paris on their persons. 
 
 But there was something about her it was 
 difficult to say what ; perhaps it was in the 
 tip of her Pompadour boot, or perhaps it hid in 
 the back widths of her skirt, or perhaps it 
 lurked in the black sable fur of her dolman, 
 but a something that made them feel there was 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 39 
 
 a gulf never to be passed between them and 
 this world -famed elegante. 
 
 Lady Hilda would have said her secret lay in 
 her always being just a quarter of an hour in 
 advance of the fashion. She was always the 
 first person to be seen, in what six weeks after- 
 wards was the rage : and when the rage came, 
 then Lady Hilda had dropped the fashion. 
 Hence she was the perpetual despair of all her 
 sex a distinction which she was quite human 
 enough to enjoy in a contemptuous scrt of way ; 
 as contemptuous of herself as of others ; for she 
 had a certain vague generosity and largeness of 
 mind which lifted her above mean and small 
 emotions in general. 
 
 She had been steeped in the world, as people 
 call that combination of ennui, excitement, selfish- 
 ness, fatigue, and glitter, which forms the various 
 delights of modern existence, till it had pene- 
 trated her through and through, as a petrifying 
 stream does the supple bough put in it. But 
 there were little corners in her mind which the 
 petrifaction had not reached. 
 
 This morning it was half-past five o'clock in 
 
40 IN A WINTER 
 
 a November afternoon, and pitch dark, but of 
 2ourse it was morning still as nobody Lad dined, 
 the advent of soup and sherry bringing the only 
 meridian recognised in society the Lady Hilda 
 refreshed with a cup of tea from the samo- 
 var of her friend the Princess Olga Schouvaloff, 
 who came yearly to her palace in the historical 
 river-street of historical Floralia, and having 
 been assured by Princess Olga, that if they kept 
 quite amongst themselves, and never knew any- 
 body else but the Floralian Kussian and German 
 nobility, and steadfastly refused to allow any- 
 body else to be presented to them, Floralia was 
 bearable nay, even really agreeable, she got 
 into her coupe, and was driven through the 
 gloom to her hotel. 
 
 Her head servant made her two announce- 
 ments : Madame de Caviare had arrived that 
 morning, and hoped to see her before dinner. 
 
 Lady Hilda's brows frowned a little. 
 
 The Duca della Rocca had sent these flowers. 
 
 Lady Hilda's eyes smiled a little. 
 
 They were only some cyclamens fresh from 
 the country, in moss. She had regretted to him 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 41 
 
 the day before that those lovely simple wood 
 flowers could not be found at florists' shops nor 
 in flower women's baskets. 
 
 After all, she said to herself, it did not matter 
 that Mila had come ; she was silly and not very 
 proper, and a nuisance altogether ; but Mila was 
 responsible for her own sins, and sometimes could 
 be amusing. So the Lady Hilda, in a good- 
 humoured and serene frame of mind, crossed the 
 corridor to the apartments her cousin had taken 
 just opposite to her own. 
 
 " He is certainly very striking looking like a 
 Vandyke picture," she thought to herself irrele- 
 vantly, as she tapped at her cousin's door ; those 
 cyclamens had pleased her; yet she had let 
 thousands of the loveliest and costliest bouquets 
 wither in her anteroom every year of her life, 
 without deigning to ask or heed who were even 
 the senders of them. 
 
 " Come in, if it's you, dear," said Madame 
 Mila, ungrammatically and vaguely, in answer to 
 the tap. 
 
 The Countess de Caviare was an English- 
 woman, and a cousin, one of the great West 
 
42 IN A WIN1ER CITY. 
 
 country Treliillyons whom everybody knows, 
 her mother having been a Clairvaux. She had 
 been grandly married in her first season to a very 
 high and mighty and almost imperial Russian, 
 himself a most good-humoured and popular per- 
 son, who killed all his horses with fast driving, 
 gambled very heavily, and never amused himself 
 anywhere so well as in the little low dancing 
 places round Paris. 
 
 Madame Mila, as her friends always called 
 her, was as pretty a little woman as could 
 be imagined, who enamelled herself to such 
 perfection that she had a face of fifteen, on the 
 most fashionable and wonderfully costumed of 
 bodies ; she was very fond of her cousin Hilda, 
 because she could borrow so much money of 
 her, and she had come to Fioralia this winter 
 because in Paris there was a rumour that she 
 had cheated at cards false, of course, but still 
 odious. 
 
 If she had made a little pencil mark on some 
 of the aces, where was the harm in that ? 
 
 She almost always played with the same 
 people, and they had won heaps of money of her. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 43 
 
 Whilst those horrid creatures in the city and 
 on the bourse were allowed to "rig the market,*' 
 and nobody thought the worse of them for 
 spreading false news to send their shares up or 
 down, why should not one poor little woman 
 try to help on Chance a little bit at play ? 
 
 She was always in debt, though she admitted 
 that her husband allowed her liberally. She 
 had eight}' thousand francs a year by her settle- 
 ments to spend on herself, and he gave her 
 another fifty thousand to do as she pleased 
 with : on the whole about one half what he 
 allowed to Blanche Souris, of the Chateau 
 Gaillard theatre. 
 
 She had had six children, three were living 
 and three were dead ; she thought herself a good 
 mother, because she gave her wet-nurses ever 
 so many silk gowns, and when she wanted the 
 children for a fancy ball or a drive, always saw 
 that they were faultlessly dressed, and besides she 
 always took them to Trouville. 
 
 She had never had any grief in her life, except 
 the loss of the Second Empire, and even that 
 she got over when she found that flying the Bed 
 
44 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Cross flag had saved her hotel, without so much 
 as a teacup being broken in it, that MM. Worth 
 and Offenbach were safe from all bullets, and that 
 society, under the Septennate, promised to be 
 every bit as leste as under the Empire. 
 
 In a word, Madame Mila was a type of the 
 women of her time. 
 
 The women who go semi-nude in an age which 
 has begun to discover that the nude in sculpture 
 is very immoral ; who discuss ' Tue-la ' in a gene- 
 ration which decrees Moliere to be coarse, and 
 Beaumont and Fletcher indecent; who have 
 the Journal pour Eire on their tables in a day 
 when no one who respects himself would name 
 the Harlot's Progress ; who read Beaudelaire 
 and patronise Teresa and Schneider in an 
 era which finds ' Don Juan ' gross, and 
 Shakespeare far too plain ; who strain all 
 their energies to rival Miles. Rose The and 
 La Petite Boulotte in everything ; who go 
 shrimping or oyster-hunting on fashionable sea- 
 shores, with their legs bare to the knee ; who go 
 to the mountains with confections, high heels, 
 and gold-tipped canes, shriek over their gambling 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 45 
 
 as the dawn reddens over the Alps, and know no 
 more of the glories of earth and sky, of sunrise 
 and sunset, than do the porcelain pots that hold 
 their paint, or the silver dressing-box that carries 
 their hair-dye. 
 
 Women who are in convulsions one day, and 
 on the top of a drag the next; who are in 
 hysterics for their lovers at noon-day, and in ecsta- 
 cies over baccarat at midnight ; who laugh in littlt 
 nooks together over each other's immoralities, 
 and have a moral code so elastic that it will pardon 
 anything except innocence ; who gossip over each 
 other's dresses, and each other's passions, in the 
 self-same, self-satisfied chirp of contentment, and 
 who never resent anything on earth, except any 
 eccentric suggestion that life could be anything 
 except a perpetual fete a la Watteau in a per- 
 petual blaze of lime-light. 
 
 Pain ? Are there not chloral and a flattering 
 doctor? Sorrow? Are there not a course at the 
 Baths, play at Monte Carlo, and new cases from 
 Worth ? Shame ? Is it not a famine fever which 
 never comes near a well laden table ? Old Age ? 
 i Is there not white and red paint, and heads of 
 
46 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 dead hair, and even false bosoms? Death? 
 Well, no doubt there is death, but they do not 
 realise it ; they hardly believe in it, they think 
 about it so little. 
 
 There is something unknown somewhere to 
 fall on them some day that they dread vaguely, 
 for they are terrible cowards. But they worry 
 as little about it as possible. They give the 
 millionth part of what they possess away in its 
 name to whatever church they belong to, and they 
 think they have arranged quite comfortably for all 
 possible contingencies hereafter. 
 
 If it make things safe, they will head bazaars 
 for the poor, or wear black in holy week, turn 
 lottery- wheels for charity, or put on fancy 
 dresses in the name of benevolence, or do any 
 little amiable trifle of that sort. But as for 
 changing their lives, pas si bete f 
 
 A bird in the hand they hold worth two in the 
 bush ; and though your birds may be winged on 
 strong desire, and your bush the burning parterre 
 of Moses, they will have none of them. 
 
 These women are not all bad ; oh, no ! they are 
 like sheep, that is all. If it were fashionable to 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 47 
 
 be virtuous, very likely they would be so. If it 
 were chic to be devout, no doubt they would pass 
 their life on their knees. But, as it is, they 
 know that a flavour of vice is as necessary to their 
 reputation as great ladies, as sorrel-leaves to soup 
 a la bonne femme. They affect a license if they 
 take it not. 
 
 They are like the barber, who said, with much 
 pride, to Voltaire, "Je ne suis qu'un pauvre 
 diable de perruquier, mais jene crois pas en Dieu 
 plus que les autres." 
 
 They may be worth very little, but they are 
 desperately afraid that you should make such a 
 mistake as to think them worth anything at all. 
 You are not likely, if you know them. Still, 
 they are apprehensive. 
 
 Though one were to arise from the dead to 
 preach to them, they would only make of him a 
 nine days' wonder, and then laugh a little, and 
 yawn a little, and go on in their own paths. 
 
 Out of the eater came forth meat, and from 
 evil there may be begotten good ; but out of 
 nullity there can only come nullity. They 
 have wadded their ears, and though Jeremiah 
 
48 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 wailed of desolation, or Isaiah thundered the 
 wrath of heaven, they would not hear, they 
 would go on looking at each other's dresses. 
 
 What could Paul himself say that would change 
 them? 
 
 You cannot make saw-dust into marble ; you 
 cannot make sea-sand into gold. " Let us alone," 
 is all they ask ; and it is all that you could do v 
 though the force and flame of Horeh were in you. 
 
 Mila, Countess de Caviare having arrived early 
 in the morning and remained invisible all day, 
 had awakened at five to a cup of tea, an ex- 
 quisite dressing-gown, and her choicest enamel ; 
 she now gave many bird-like kisses to her 
 cousin, heaped innumerable endearments upon 
 her, and hearing there was nothing to do, sent 
 out for a box at the French Theatre. 
 
 " It is wretched acting," said the Lady Hilda ; 
 "I went the other night but I did not stay 
 half-an-hour." 
 
 " That of course, ma chere," said Madame 
 Mila; "but we shall be sure to see people we 
 know, heaps of people." 
 
 " Such as they are," said the Lady Hilda. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 49 
 
 "At any rate it is better than spending an 
 evening alone. I never spent an evening alone 
 in my life," said Mme. de Caviare, who could no 
 more live without a crowd about her than she 
 could sleep without chlorodyne, or put on a 
 petticoat without two or three maids' assist- 
 ance. 
 
 The French company in Floralia is usually 
 about the average of the weakly patchwork 
 Vroops of poor actors that pass on third rate 
 little stages in the French departments; but 
 Floralia, feminine and fashionable, flocks to the 
 French company because it can rely on some- 
 thing tant soit peu hazards, and is quite sure 
 not to be bored with decency, and if by any 
 oversight or bad taste the management should 
 put any serious sort of piece on the stage, it 
 can always turn its back to the stage and whisper 
 to its lovers, or chatter shrilly to its allies. 
 
 They went into their box as the second act 
 ended of Mme. de Scabreuse ; a play of the period, 
 written by a celebrated author; in which the 
 lady married her nephew, and finding out that 
 he was enamoured of her daughter, the offspring 
 
50 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 of a first marriage, bought poison for them both, 
 and then suddenly changing her mind, with 
 magnificent magnanimity drank it herself, and 
 blessed the lovers as she died in great agonies. 
 
 It had been brought out in Paris with enor- 
 mous success, and as Lady Hilda and the 
 Countess had both seen it half-a-dozen times 
 they could take no interest in it. 
 
 " You would come ! " said the former, raising 
 her eyebrows and seating herself so as to see 
 nothing whatever of the stage and as little as 
 possible of the house. 
 
 " Of course," replied Madame Mila, whose 
 lorgnon was ranging hither and thither, like a 
 general's spy-glass before a battle. " There was 
 nothing else to do at least you said there was no- 
 thing. Look ! some of those women have actually 
 got the oeuf de Paques corsage good heaven ! 
 those went out last year, utterly, utterly ! Ah, 
 there is Lucia San Luca what big emeralds 
 and there is Maria Castelfidardo, how old she is 
 looking. That is Lady Featherleigh you re- 
 member that horrid scandal ? Yes, I hear 
 they do visit her here. How handsome Luisa 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 51 
 
 Ottoseccoli looks ; powder becomes her so ; 
 her son is a pretty hoy oh, you never stoop 
 to hoys ; you are wrong ; nothing amuses you 
 like a boy ; how they believe in one ! There 
 is that Canadian woman who tried to get 
 into notice in Paris two seasons ago you 
 remember ? they make her quite Creme in 
 this place the idea ! She is dressed very 
 well, I dare say if she were always dumb she 
 might pass. She never would have been heard 
 of even here, only Attavante pushed her right 
 and left, bribed the best people to her parties, 
 and induced all his other tendresses to send her 
 cards. In love ! of course not ! Who is in love 
 with a face like a Mohican squaw's, and a 
 squeak like a goose's ? But they are immensely 
 rich ; at least they have mountains of ready 
 money ; he must have suffered dreadfully before 
 he made her dress well. Teach her gram- 
 mar, in any language, he never will. There is 
 the old Duchess why, she was a centenarian 
 when we were babies but they say she plays 
 every atom as keenly as ever nobody can beat 
 her for lace either look at that Spanish point, 
 
 K 2 
 
62 1A A WINTEP. CITY. 
 
 There are a few decent people here this winter ; 
 not many though ; I think it would have been 
 wiser to have stopped at Nice. Ah mon cher, 
 comment a va ? tell me, Maurice, who is that 
 woman in black with good diamonds, there, with 
 Sampierdareno and San Marco?" 
 
 ' Maurice,* pressing her pretty hand, sank down 
 on to the hard bench behind her armchair, and 
 insinuated gracefully that the woman in black 
 with good diamonds was not " d'une vertu assez 
 forte," to be noticed by or described to such 
 ladies as Mila, Countess de Caviare ; but since 
 identification of her was insisted on, proceeded 
 to confess that she was no less a person than 
 the wild Duke of Stirling's Gloria. 
 
 " Ah ! is that Gloria ! " said Madame, with 
 the keenest interest, bringing her lorgnon to 
 bear instantly. " How curious ! I never chanced 
 to see her before. How quiet she looks, and 
 how plainly she is dressed." 
 
 "I am afraid we have left Gloria and her 
 class no other way of being singular ! " said the 
 Lady Hilda, who had muttered her welcome 
 somewhat coldly to Maurice. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 63 
 
 Maurice, Vicomte des Gommeux, was a young 
 Parisian, famous for leading cotillons and driving 
 piebalds; lie followed Mme. de Caviare with 
 the regularity of her afternoon shadow ; was as 
 much an institution with her as her anodynes ; 
 and much more useful than her courier. To 
 avoid all appearances that might set a wicked 
 world talking, he generally arrived in a city about 
 twenty-four hours after her, and, as she was a 
 woman of good-breeding who insisted on les 
 m&iirs, always went to another hotel. He had 
 held his present post actually so long as three 
 years, and there were as yet no signs of his 
 being dismissed and replaced, for he was very 
 devoted, very obedient, very weak, saw nothing 
 that he was intended not to see, and was very 
 adroit at rolling cigarettes. 
 
 " II est si bon enfant ! " said the Count de 
 Caviare, to everybody; he really was grateful 
 to the young man, some of whose predecessors 
 had much disturbed his wife's temper and his 
 own personal peace. 
 
 "Bon soir, Mesdames," said the Due de St 
 Louis, entering the box. " Comtesse, charme de 
 
54 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 vous voir Miladi a vos pieds. What a wretched 
 creature that is playing Julie de Scabreuse. I 
 blush for my country. When I was a young man, 
 the smallest theatre in France would not have en- 
 dured that woman. There was a public then 
 with proper feeling for the histrionic as for every 
 other art ; a bad gesture or a false intonation was 
 hissed by every audience, were that audience 
 only composed of workmen and work girls ; but 
 now 
 
 "May one enter, Mesdames?" asked his 
 friend, Delia Rocca. 
 
 " One may if you will only shut the door. 
 Thanks for the cyclamens," said the Lady Hilda, 
 with a little of the weariness going off her deli- 
 cate, proud face. 
 
 Delia Rocca took the seat behind her, as the 
 slave Maurice surrendered his to M. de St. Louis. 
 
 " Happy flowers ! I found them in my own 
 woods this morning," he said, as he took his seat. 
 " You do not seem much amused, Madame." 
 
 " Amused ! The play is odious. Even poor 
 Desclee's genius could only give it a horrible fas- 
 cination." 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 55 
 
 " It has the worst fault of all, it is unnatural." 
 
 " Yes ; it is very curious, but the French will 
 have so much vice in the drama, and the English 
 must have so much virtue, that a natural or pos- 
 sible play is an impossibility now upon either 
 stage." 
 
 "You looked more interested in the Majolica 
 this morning " 
 
 " How, did you see me ? " 
 
 " I was passing through the tower of the 
 Podesta on business. Is it not wonderful our old 
 pottery? It is intensely to be regretted that 
 Ginori and Carocci imitate it so closely ; it vul- 
 garises a thing whose chief beauty after all is 
 association and age." 
 
 " Yes ; what charm there is in a marriage 
 plate of Maestro Giorgio's, or a sweetmeat dish 
 of your Orazio Fontana's ! But there is very 
 scanty pleasure in reproductions of them, how- 
 ever clever these may be, such as Pietro Gay 
 sends out to Paris and Vienna Exhibitions." 
 
 " You mean, there can be no mind in an imi- 
 tation ? " 
 
 " Of course ; I would rather have the crudest 
 
56 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 original thing than the mere galvanism of the 
 corpse of a dead genius. I would give a thousand 
 paintings hy Froment, Damousse, or any of the 
 finest living artists of Sevres, for one piece by 
 old Van der Meer of Delft ; but I would prefer a 
 painting on Sevres done yesterday by Froment 
 or Damousse, or even any much less famous 
 worker, provided only it had originality in it, to 
 the best reproduction of a Van der Meer that 
 modern manufacturers could produce." 
 
 " I think you are right ; but I fear our old 
 pottery painters were not very original. They 
 copied from the pictures and engravings of Man- 
 tegna, Raffaelle, Marcantonio, Marco di Ra- 
 venna, Beatricius, and a score of others." 
 
 " The application was original, and the senti- 
 ment they brought to it. Those old artists put 
 so much heart into their work." 
 
 "Because when they painted a stemma on 
 the glaze they had still feudal faith in nobility, 
 and when they painted a Madonna or Ecce Homo 
 they had still child-like belief in divinity. What 
 does the pottery painter of to-day care for the 
 coat of arms or the religious subject he may be 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 67 
 
 commissioned to execute for a dinner service or 
 a chapel ? It may be admirable painting if you 
 give a very high price but it will still be only 
 manufacture.*' 
 
 " Then what pleasant lives those pottery paint- 
 ers of the earty days must have led ! They were 
 never long stationary. They wandered about 
 decorating at their fancy, now here and now 
 there ; now a vase for a pharmacy, and now a 
 stove for a king. You find German names on 
 Italian ware, and Italian names on Flemish gres ; 
 the Nuremberger would work in Venice, the 
 Dutchman would work in Bouen." 
 
 "Sometimes however they were accused of 
 sorcery ; the great potter, Hans Kraut, you re- 
 member, was feared by his townsmen as possessed 
 by the devil, and was buried ignominiously out- 
 side the gates, in his nook of the Black Forest. 
 But on the whole they were happ}% no doubt : 
 men of simple habits and of worthy lives/' 
 
 " You care for art yourself, IVx. Delia Rocca ? ** 
 
 There came a gleam of interest in her hand- 
 some, languid hazel eyes, as she turned them 
 upon him. 
 
58 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Every Italian does," he answered her. " I 
 do not think we are ever, or I think, if ever, very 
 seldom connoisseurs in the way that your Eng- 
 lishman and Frenchman is so. We are never very 
 learned as to styles and dates ; we cannot boast 
 the huckster's eye of the northern bric-a-brao 
 hunter ; it is quite another thing with us ; we 
 love art as children their nurses' tales and cradle 
 songs ; it is a familiar affection with us, and 
 affection is never very analytical; the Robbia 
 over the chapel-door, the apostle-pot that the 
 men in the stables drink out of; the Sodoma or the 
 Beato Angelico that hangs before our eyes daily 
 as we dine ; the old bronze secchia that we wash 
 our hands in as boys in the Loggia these are 
 all so homely and dear to us that we grow up 
 with a love for them all as natural as our love for 
 our mothers. You will say the children of all 
 rich people see beautiful and ancient things from 
 their birth ; so they do, but not as we see 
 them here they are too often degraded to the 
 basest household uses, and made no more account 
 of than the dust which gathers on them ; but 
 that verv neglect of them makes them the more 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 59 
 
 kindred to us. Art elsewhere is the guest of the 
 salon with us she is the play -mate of the infant 
 and the serving-maid of the peasant : the mules 
 may drink from an Etruscan sarcophagus, and 
 the pigeons be fed from a patina of the twelfth 
 century." 
 
 Lady Hilda listened with the look of awakened 
 interest still in her large eyes ; he spoke in his own 
 tongue, and with feeling and grace ; it was new 
 to her to find a man with whom art was an emo- 
 tion instead of an opinion. 
 
 The art world she had met with was one 
 that was very positive, very eclectic, very hyper- 
 critical, very highly cultured ; it had many 
 theories and elegant phrases ; it laid down end- 
 less doctrines, and found pleasure in endless dis- 
 putations. Whenever she had tired of the world of 
 fashion, this was the world she had turned to ; 
 it had imbued her with knowledge of art, and 
 immeasurable contempt for those to whom art 
 was a dead letter ; but art had remained with her 
 father an intellectual dissipation than a tender- 
 ness of sentiment. 
 
 " As you care for these things, Madame," con- 
 
60 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 tinned Delia Rocca, with hesitation, "might I 
 one dfiy hope that you would honour my poor 
 villa ? It has little else left in it ; but there are 
 still a few rare pieces of Gubhio and Urbino and 
 Faenza, and I have a Calvary which, if not by 
 Lucca himself, is certainly by Andrea della 
 Robbia.' 
 
 "I shall be glad to see them. Your villa is 
 near?" 
 
 " About ten miles' distance, up in the hills. 
 It was once a great stronghold as well as palace. 
 Kowit can boast no interest save such as may 
 go with fallen fortunes. For more than a century 
 we have been too poor to be able to do any more 
 than keep wind and water out of it ; and it had 
 been cleared before my time of almost everything 
 of value. Happily, however, the chestnut woods 
 outside it have not been touched. They shroud 
 its nakedness." 
 
 " Your villa, Delia Rocca ? " cried Madame de 
 Caviare, who had known him for several years. 
 " I have never seen it ; we will drive out there 
 gome day when the cold winds are gone " 
 
 "Vous me comblez de bontds," he answered, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 61 
 
 rrith a low bow. " Alas, Madame, there is very 
 little that will repay you : it is hardly more than 
 a ruin. But if you and Miladi will indeed honour 
 
 i. 99 
 
 " It is a very fine place still," said the Due de 
 St. Louis, a little impatiently. " It has suffered 
 in sieges; and is by so much the more interesting. 
 For myself, I endure very much pain from having 
 a whole house, and one built no later than 1730. 
 My great grandfather pulled down the noble old 
 castle, built at the same time as Chateau Gaillard 
 ^imagine the barbarism ! and employed the pon- 
 derous rocaille of Oppenord to replace it. It is very 
 curious, but loss of taste in the nobles has always 
 been followed by a revolution of the mob. The 
 decadence always ushers in the democracy." 
 
 " We may well be threatened then in this day 
 with universal equality ! " said the Lady Hilda, 
 hiding a very small yawn behind her fan. 
 
 " Nay, Madame," said Delia Kocca. " In this 
 day the nobles do not even do so much as to 
 lead a wrong taste ; they accept and adopt every 
 form of it, as imposed on them by their tailors, 
 their architects, their clubs, and their munici- 
 
62 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 palities, as rocaille was imposed by the cabinet- 
 makers." 
 
 " How fearfully serious you all are ! " said 
 Madame de Caviare. " There is that dreadful 
 Canadian woman standing up what rubies : 
 how fond vulgar women always are of rubies. 
 That passe-partout of hers is rather pretty ; gold 
 thread on blondine satin, is it not, Hilda ? My 
 glass is not very strong " 
 
 Lady Hilda looked through her glass, and 
 decided the important point in the affirma- 
 tive. 
 
 " How she is rouged ! " pursued the Countess. 
 " I am sure Altavante did not lay that on ; he 
 is much too artistic. Maurice, have you a 
 cigarette ? " 
 
 " It is not allowed, ma chere," said the Lady 
 Hilda. 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Madame de Caviare, accepting 
 a little delicate paper roll. " It was very kind of 
 you, Hilda, to remind me of that ; you wished me 
 to enjoy it. Won't you have one too ?" 
 
 Lady Hilda said " No " with her fan. 
 
 " If the Rocaille brought the Revolution, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Due," she asked, " what will our smoking bring ? 
 the end of the world ? " 
 
 "It will bring animosity of the sexes, aboli- 
 tion of the marriage laws, and large increase of 
 paralysis," replied M. de St. Louis with great 
 decision. 
 
 " You have answered me without a compliment 
 what flattery to my intelligence." 
 
 " Miladi, I never flatter you. I am not in the 
 habit of imitating all the world." 
 
 " You look severe, Delia Rocca," said Madame 
 Mila. " Do you disapprove of women smoking? " 
 
 " Madame, a woman of grace lends grace to all 
 she does, no doubt." 
 
 " That is to say, you don't approve it?" 
 
 "Madame, I merely doubt whether Lionardo 
 would have painted Mona Lisa had she smoked." 
 
 " What a good idea you give me ! I will be 
 painted by Millais or Cabanel, smoking. It will 
 be novel. The cigar shall be in my mouth. 
 I will send you the first photograph. Ah ! 
 there is Nordlingen ; he will come over here, 
 and he is the greatest bore in Europe. You 
 know what your King here said, when Nord- 
 
64 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Ungen had bored him at three audiences about 
 heaven knows what. ' I never knew the use of 
 sentinels before ; let that man be shot if he ask 
 audience again ! * We cannot shoot him ; let us 
 go to supper. Due, you will follow us, with M. 
 des Gommeux? and you, too, Delia Kocca? 
 There is that odious Canadian woman going; 
 let us make haste ; I should like to see that blon- 
 dine cloak close ; I shall know whether it looks 
 like Worth or Pingat." 
 
 She passed out on the Due's arm, and the Lady 
 Hilda accepted Delia Bocca's, while the well- 
 trained Maurice, who knew his duties, rushed to 
 find the footmen in the vestibule, and to arrest 
 another gilded youth and kindred spirit, a M. des 
 Poisseux, whom Madame Mila had espied in the 
 crowd, and charged him to bring with him to 
 supper. Madame Mila preferred, to all the world, 
 the young men of her world of five and twenty or 
 less ; they had no mind whatever, they had not 
 character enough to be jealous, and they were as 
 full of the last new scandals as any dowager of 
 sixty. 
 
 " They talk of the progress of this age : con- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 65 
 
 trast M. de St. Louis with M. des Gommeux and 
 M. des Poisseux ! " said the Lady Hilda, with her 
 little contemptuous smile 
 
 Delia Rocca laughed. 
 
 " You make me for the first time, Madame, 
 well content to belong to what the Gommeux and 
 the Poisseux would call a past generation. But 
 there are not many like our friend the Due ; he 
 has stepped down to us from the terraces of 
 Marly ; I am certain he went to sleep one night 
 after a gavotte with Montespan, and has only just 
 awakened.'* 
 
 The supper was gay and bright ; Lady Hilda, 
 rejecting chicken and champagne, and accepting 
 only ice-water and cigarettes, deigned to be 
 amusing, though sarcastic, and Madame Mila was 
 always in one of the two extremes either syn- 
 cope, sal volatile, and hysterics, or laughter, 
 frolic, smoke and risque stories. 
 
 She and her sisterhood spend their lives in this 
 see-saw ; the first state is for the mornings, when 
 they remember their losses at play, their lovers' 
 looks at other women, the compromising notes 
 they have written, and how much too much to be 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 safe their maids knew of them ; the second state 
 is for the evenings, when they have their war-paint 
 on, have taken a little nip of some stimulant at 
 afternoon tea, are going to half-a-dozen houses 
 between midnight and dawn, and are quite sure 
 their lovers never even see that any other women 
 exist. 
 
 " He could not have a better illustration of the 
 difference between a woman with taste and a 
 woman without it," thought the Due de St. Louis, 
 surveying the two ; the Countess had a million 
 or two of false curls in a tower above her pretty 
 tiny face, was almost as de'colletee as a Greuze pic- 
 ture, chirped the fashionable slang of the boule- 
 vards and salons in the shrillest and swiftest of 
 voices, and poured forth slanders that were more 
 diverting than decorous. 
 
 Lady Hilda was dressed like a picture of Marie 
 Antoinette, in 1780 ; her rich hair was lifted from 
 her low fair forehead in due keeping with her 
 costume, she swept aside her cousin's naughty 
 stories with as much tact as contempt, and spoke 
 a French which Marie Antoinette could have 
 recognised as the language in which Voltaire once 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 67 
 
 scoffed, and Andre Chenier sighed. To be sure, 
 she did smoke a little, but then even the most 
 perfect taste cannot quite escape the cachet of its 
 era. 
 
 " It was not necessary, my friend, to say that 
 your place was so poor," said M. de St. Louis, as 
 they went out of the hotel together ; he had 
 known his companion from boyhood. 
 
 " I am not ashamed of my poverty," said 
 Delia Rocca, somewhat coldly. " Besides," he 
 added, with a laugh which had not much mirth in 
 it, " our poverty is as well known as that of the 
 city. I think the most dishonest Delia Rocca 
 could not conceal it by any adroitness, any 
 more than Floralia could conceal her public 
 debt." 
 
 " That may be, but neither you nor the town 
 need proclaim the state of your affairs," said 
 the Due, who never gave up an opinion. "You 
 should let her be interested in you before 
 you make it so evident; such silence is quite 
 permissible. You need say nothing ; you need 
 hide nothing ; you need only let things alone." 
 
 "My dear Due," said Delia Rocca, with a 
 
 t 2 
 
68 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 laugh that had melancholy in it and some 
 irritation, u jhink for one moment of that 
 woman's position, and say could anything ever 
 induce her to change it except one thing . 
 Biches could add nothing to her; the highest 
 rank could scarcely be any charm to her; she 
 has everything she can want or wish for ; if she 
 had the power of wishing left, which I doubt. The 
 only spell that might enchain her would be love, if 
 she have any capacity to feel it, which I doubt also. 
 Well granted love aroused, what would po- 
 verty or riches in her lover matter to one who 
 has secured for ever a golden pedestal of her own 
 from which to survey the woes of the world? 
 She refused the Prince of Deutchsland ; that I 
 know, since he told me himself; and men do 
 not boast of rejections ; what position, pray, 
 would ever tempt her since she refused Deutchs- 
 land ? and he has all personal attractions, too, as 
 well as his future crown." 
 
 " Still, granting all that, to make your lack 
 of fortune so very conspicuous is to render your 
 purpose conspicuous also, and to draw her atten- 
 tion to it unwisely," said the Due, who viewed 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 69 
 
 all these matters calmly, as a kind of mixture of 
 diplomacy and business. 
 
 " Caro mio ! " said Delia Kocca lightly, as 
 he descended the last step. "Be very sure 
 that if I ever have such a purpose, your Lady 
 Hilda has too much wit not to perceive it in a 
 day. But I have not such a purpose. I do 
 not like a woman who smokes." 
 
 And with a good night he walked away to his 
 own house, which was a street or two distant. 
 The Due chuckled, no wise discomfited. 
 
 " An Italian always swears he will never do the 
 thing he means to do in an hour," the Due re- 
 flected as he got in his cab. 
 
 The Delia Eocca Palace was let to many tenants 
 and in various divisions ; he himself retained only 
 a few chambers looking upon the old quiet green 
 garden, high walled, dark with ilex, and musical 
 with fountains. 
 
 He crossed the silent courts, mounted the vast 
 black stairways, and entered his solitary rocms, 
 There was a lamp burning ; and his dog got up 
 and welcomed him. He slipped on an old velvet 
 smoking coat, lighted a cigar, and sat down : the 
 
70 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 councils and projects of M. de St. Louis were 
 not so entirely rejected by him as he had wished 
 the Due to suppose. 
 
 He admired her ; he did not approve her ; he 
 was not even sure that he liked her in any way ; 
 but he could not but see that here at last was the 
 marriage which would bring the resurrection of 
 all his fortunes. 
 
 Neither did he feel any of the humility which 
 he had expressed to M. de St. Louis. Though 
 she might be as cold as people all said she was, he 
 had little fear, if he once endeavoured, that he 
 would fail in making his way into her graces. 
 With an Italian, love is too perfect a science for 
 him to be uncertain of its results. 
 
 Besides, he believed that he detected a different 
 character in her to what the world thought, and 
 she also thought was her own. He thought 
 men had all failed with her because they had not 
 gone the right way to work. After all, to make 
 a woman in love with ycr i was easy enough. At 
 least he had always found it so. 
 
 She was a woman, too, of unusual beauty, and 
 of supreme grace, and a great alliance ; her 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 71 
 
 money would restore him to the lost power of his 
 ancestors, and save a mighty and stainless name 
 from falling into that paralysis of poverty and 
 that dust of obscurity, which are, sooner or later, 
 its utter extinction. She seemed cast across his 
 path hy a caress of Fortune, from which it would 
 be madness to turn aside. True, he had a wholly 
 different ideal for his wife; he disliked those 
 world-famous elegantes ; he disliked women who 
 smoked, and knew their Paris as thoroughly as 
 Houssaye or Dumas ; he disliked the extrava- 
 gant, artificial, empty, frivolous life they led; 
 their endless chase after new excitements, and 
 fcheir insatiable appetite for frissons nouveaux ; 
 he disliked their literature, their habits, their 
 cynicism, their ennui, their sensuality, and their 
 dissipations; he knew them well, and disliked 
 them in all things ; what he desired in his 
 wife were natural emotions, unworn innocence, 
 serenity, simplicity, and freshness of enjoyment ; 
 though he was of the world, he did not care 
 very much for it ; he had a meditative, imagina- 
 tive temperament, and the whirl of modern 
 society was soon wearisome to him ; on the other 
 
72 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 hand, he knew the world too well to want 
 a woman beside him who knew it equally 
 well. 
 
 On the whole, the project of M. de St. Louis 
 repelled as much as it attracted him. Yet his 
 wisdom told him that it was the marriage 
 beyond all others which would best fulfil 
 his destiny in the way which from his earliest 
 years he had been accustomed to regard as in- 
 evitable ; and, moreover, there was something 
 about her which charmed his senses, though his 
 judgment feared and in some things his taste dis- 
 approved her. 
 
 Besides, to make so self-engrossed a woman 
 love ; he smiled as he sat and smoked in the 
 solitude of his great dim vaulted room, and then 
 he sighed impatiently. 
 
 After all, it was not a "beau rdle to woo a 
 woman for the sheer sake of her fortune ; and 
 he was too true a gentleman not to know it. 
 And what would money do for him if it were 
 hers and not his ? it would only humiliate him, 
 he felt no taste for the position of a prince 
 consort, it would pass to his children certainly 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 73 
 
 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 gate- 
 way, stood out whitely from the shadows. 
 
 " After all, she would despise me, and I should 
 despise myself/' he thought ; the old coroneV 
 had been sadly battered in war, but it had never 
 been chaffered and bought. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " WHAT do you think of Delia Kocca, Hilda," 
 asked Madame Mila at the same hour that night, 
 toasting her pink satin slipper before her dress- 
 ing-room fire. 
 
 Lady Hilda yawned, unclasping her riviere of 
 sapphires. 
 
 " He has a very good manner. There is some 
 truth in what Olga Schouvaloff always maintains, 
 that after an Italian all other men seem boors." 
 
 " I am sure Maurice is not a boor ! " said the 
 Countess, pettishly. 
 
 "Oh no, my dear; he parts his hair in the 
 middle, talks the last new, unintelligible, aristo- 
 cratic argot, and has the charms of every 
 actress and dancer in Paris catalogued clearly in 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 75 
 
 a brain otherwise duly clouded, as fashion re- 
 quires, by brandy in the morning and absinthe 
 before dinner ! Boors don't do those things, nor 
 yet get half as learned as to Mile. Rose The and 
 la Petite Boulotte." 
 
 Madame Mila reddened angrily. 
 
 "What spiteful things to say; he never looked 
 at that hideous little Boulotte, or any of the 
 horrible creatures, and he never drinks ; he is a 
 perfect gentleman." 
 
 " Not quite that, ma chere ; if he had been, 
 he would never have let himself be called bon 
 enfant by your husband ! " 
 
 Madame Mila raged in passionate wrath for 
 five minutes, and then began to cry a little, 
 whimperingly. 
 
 Lady Hilda gathered up her riviere, took her 
 candlestick, and bade her good night. 
 
 " It is no use making that noise, Mila,*' she 
 said coolly. " You have always known what I 
 think, but you prefer to be in the fashion ; of 
 course you must go on as you like ; only please 
 to remember, don't let me see too much of 
 Des Gommeux." 
 
/6 IN A W1NTEH CITY. 
 
 Madame Mila, left alone to the contemplation 
 of her pink slippers, fumed and sulked and felt 
 very angry indeed; but she had borrowed a 
 thousand pounds some six or eight times from 
 the Lady Hilda to pay her debts at play ; and 
 of course it was such a trifle that she had 
 always forgotten to pay it again, because if ever 
 she had any ready money there was always 
 some jeweller, or man dressmaker, or creditor 
 of some kind who would not wait; and then, 
 though it was not her fault, because she played 
 as high as she could any night she got a 
 chance to do so, somehow or other she generally 
 lost, and never had a single sou to spare ; 
 so she muttered her rage to the pink slip- 
 pers alone, and decided that it was never worth 
 while to be put out about the Lady Hilda's 
 " ways." 
 
 " She is a bit of ice herself," she said to her 
 slippers, and wondered how Lady Hilda or any- 
 body else could object to what she did, or see 
 any harm in it. Maurice always went to another 
 hotel. 
 
 Mme. Mila lived her life in a manner very 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 77 
 
 closely resembling that of the horrible creatures 
 Miles. Rose The and Boulotte ; really, when 
 compared by a cynic there was very little dif- 
 ference to be found between those persons and 
 pretty Madame Mila. But Rose The and Bou- 
 lotte of course were creatures, and she was a 
 very great little lady, and went to all the courts 
 and embassies in Europe, and was sought and 
 courted by the very best and stiffest people, 
 being very chic and very rich, and very lofty in 
 every way, and very careful to make Maurice go 
 to a different hotel. 
 
 She had had twenty Maurices in her time 
 indeed, but then the Count de Caviare never 
 complained, and was careful to drive with her 
 in the Bois, and pass at least three months 
 of each year under the same roof with her, 
 so that nobody could say anything ; it being 
 an accepted axiom with Society that when 
 the husband does not object to his own dis- 
 honour, there is no dishonour at all in the matter 
 for any one. If he be sensitive to it then 
 indeed you must cut his wife, and there will be 
 nothing too bad to be said of her; but if he 
 
78 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 only do but connive at his own shame himself, 
 then all is quite right, and everything is as it 
 should he. 
 
 When the Prince of Cracow, with half Little 
 Russia in his possession, entertains the beautiful 
 Lady Lightwood at a banquet at his villa at 
 Frascati, Richmond, or Auteuil, a score of gilded 
 lackeys shout " La voiture de Madame la Com- 
 tesse ! " the assembled guests receive her sweet 
 good night, the Prince of Cracow bows low, 
 and thanks her for the honour she has done to 
 him; she goes out at the hall door, and the 
 carriage bowls away with loud crash and fiery 
 steeds, and rolls on its way out of the park-gates. 
 Society is quite satisfied. Society knows very 
 well that a million roubles find their yearly waj 
 into the empty pockets of Lord Lightwood, and 
 that a little later the carriage will sweep round 
 again to a side-door hidden under the laurels 
 wide open, and receive the beautiful Lady Light- 
 wood : but what is that to Society ? It has seen 
 her drive away ; that is quite sufficient, every- 
 body is satisfied with that* 
 
 If you give Society very good dinners, Society 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 79 
 
 will never be so ill-bred as to see that side- door 
 under your laurels. 
 
 Do drive out at the hall-door; do ; for sake 
 of les Bienseances that is all Society asks of 
 you ; there are some things Society feels it owes 
 to Itself, and this is one of them. 
 
 Of course, whether you come back again or not, 
 can be nobody's business. 
 
 Society can swear to the fact of the hall- 
 door. 
 
 Madame Mila was attentive to the matter of the 
 hall- door ; indeed, abhorred a scandal ; it always 
 made everything uncomfortable. She was always 
 careful of appearances. Even if you called on 
 her unexpectedly, Des Gommeux was always in an 
 inner room, unseen, and you could declare with 
 a clear conscience that you never found him alone 
 with her, were the oath ever required in any draw- 
 ing-room in defence of her character. Of course, 
 you have no sort of business with who or what 
 may be in inner rooms ; Society does not 
 require you to search a house as if you were a 
 detective. 
 
 If you can say airily, " Oh, there's nothing La 
 
80 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 it ; I never see him there," Society believes you, 
 and is quite satisfied : that is, if it wish to be- 
 lieve you ; if it do not wish, nothing would ever 
 satisfy it. No, not though there rose one from 
 the dead to bear witness. 
 
 Madame Mila would not have done anything to 
 jeopardise her going to Courts, and having all the 
 Embassies to show her jewels in, for any thing 
 that any man in the whole world could have 
 offered her. 
 
 Madame Mila thought a woman who left her 
 husband and made a scandal, a horrid creature ; 
 nay, she was worse, she was a Blunder, and by 
 her blunder made a great deal of unpleasantness 
 for other and wiser women. After a stupid, open 
 thing of that kind, Society always gets so dread- 
 fully prudish for about three months, that it is 
 disagreeable for everybody. To run off with a 
 man, and lose your settlements, and very likely 
 have to end in a boarding-house in Boulogne ? 
 could anything be more idiotic ? 
 
 Madame Mila thought that a woman so forget- 
 ting herself deserved even a worse fate than the 
 boarding-house. Madame Mila, who was quite 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 81 
 
 ?ontent that her husband should make a fool of 
 himself about Blanche Souris, or anybody else, so 
 long as he walked arm-in-arm now and then with 
 Des Gommeux, and called him " mon cher," was 
 indeed in every iota the true Femme Galante of 
 the 19th century. 
 
 The Femme Galante has passed through many 
 various changes, in many countries. The dames 
 of the Decamerone were unlike the fair athlete- 
 seekers of the days of Horace ; and the powdered 
 coquettes of the years of Moliere, were sisters only 
 by the kinship of a common vice to the frivolous 
 and fragile faggot of impulses, that is called 
 Frou-frou. 
 
 The Femme Galante has always been a feature 
 in every age ; poets from Juvenal to Musset, have 
 railed at her ; artists, from Titian to Winterhalter, 
 have painted her ; dramatists, from Aristophanes 
 to Congreve and Dumas Fils, have pointed their 
 arrows at her; satirists, from Archilochus and 
 Simonides to Hogarth and Gavarni, have poured 
 out their aqua-fortis for her. But the real 
 Femme Galante of to-day has been missed 
 hitherto. 
 
88 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Frou-frou, who stands lor her, is not in the 
 least the true type. Frou-frou is a creature that 
 jan love, can suffer, can repent, can die. She 
 is false in sentiment and in art, hut she is 
 tender after all ; poor, feverish, wistful, change- 
 ful morsel of humanity. A slender, helpless, 
 breathless, and frail thing, who, under one sad, 
 short sin, sinks down to death. 
 
 But Frou-frou is in no sense the true Femme 
 Galante of her day. Frou-frou is much more a 
 fancy than a fact. It is not Frou-frou that Mo- 
 liere would have handed down to other genera- 
 tions in enduring ridicule, had he heen living 
 now. To her he would have doffed his hat 
 with dim eyes ; what he would have fastened 
 for all time in his pillory would have been a 
 very different, and far more conspicuous, 
 offender. 
 
 The Femme Galante, who has neither the 
 scruples nor the follies of poor Frou-frou, who 
 neither forfeits her place nor leaves her lord ; 
 who has studied adultery as one of the fine arts and 
 made it one of the domestic virtues ; who takes 
 her wearied lover to her Mends' houses as she 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 83 
 
 takes her muff or her dog, and teaches her sons 
 and daughters to call him by familiar names ; who 
 writes to the victim of her passions with the 
 same pen that calls her boy home from school ; 
 and who smooths her child's curls with the same 
 fingers that stray over her lover's lips ; who 
 challenges the world to find a flaw in her, and 
 who smiles serene at her husband's table on a 
 society she is careful to conciliate ; who has woven 
 the most sacred ties and most unholy pleasures 
 into so deft a braid, that none can say where one 
 commences or the other ends ; who uses the sanc- 
 tity of her maternity to cover the lawlessness of 
 her license ; and who, incapable alike of the self- 
 abandonment of love or of the self-sacrifice of 
 duty, has not even such poor, cheap honour as, 
 in the creatures of the streets, may make guilt 
 loyal to its dupe and partner. 
 
 This is the Femme Galante of the passing 
 century, who, with her hand on her husband's 
 arm, babbles of her virtue in complacent boast ; 
 aud ignoring such a vulgar word as Sin, talks 
 with a smile of Friendship. Beside her Frou-frou 
 were innocence itself, Marion de I'Orme were 
 
 A* 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 nonesty, Manon Lescaut were purity, Cleopatra 
 were chaste, and Faustine were faithful. 
 
 She is the female Tartuffe of seduction, the 
 Precieuse Ridicule of passion, the parody of 
 Love, the standing gihe of Womanhood. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE next day the Duca della Rocca left cards 
 on Lady Hilda and the Comtesse de Caviare ; 
 and then for a fortnight never went near either 
 of them except to exchange a few words with 
 them in other people's houses. M. de St. 
 Louis, who was vastly enamoured of his pro- 
 ject, because it was his project (what better 
 reason has anybody ?) was irritated and in des- 
 pair. 
 
 " You fly in the face of Fate ! " he said, with 
 much impatience. 
 
 Delia Rocca laughed. 
 
 " There is no such person as Fate she 
 perished with all the rest of the Pagan world 
 
86 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 when we put up our first gas-lamp. The two I 
 regret most of them all are Faunus and Picus ; 
 nowadays we make Faunus into a railway con- 
 tractor, and shoot Picus for the market- 
 stall." 
 
 " You are very romantic," said the Due, with 
 serene contempt. " It is an unfortunate quality ; 
 and I confess," he added, with a sigh, as if 
 confessing a hlemish in a favourite horse, 
 " that, perhaps, she is a little deficient in 
 the other extreme, a little too cold, a little 
 too unimpressionable ; there is absolutely no 
 shadow of cause to suppose she ever felt the 
 slightest emotion for anyone. That gives, per- 
 haps, a certain hardness. It is not natural. 
 * Une petite faiblesse donne tant de charme.' " 
 
 " In a wife, one might dispense with the 
 'petite faiblesse ' for anyone else," said Delia 
 Eocca, with a smile ; the blemish did not seem 
 much of a fault in his eyes. 
 
 " That is a romantic notion/' said the Due, 
 with a little touch of disdain. " In real truth a 
 woman is easier to manage who has had a past. 
 She knows what to expect. It is flattering to be 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 87 
 
 the first object of passion to a woman. But it 
 is troublesome : she exacts so much ! " 
 
 " If I were not that, I have seldom cared to 
 be anything," said Delia Kocca. 
 
 " That is an Italian amorous fancy. Borneo 
 and Othello are the typical Italian lovers. I 
 never can tell how a northerner like Shakspeare 
 could draw either. You are often very unfaith- 
 ful ; but while you are faithful you are ardent, 
 and you are absorbed in the woman. That is 
 one of the reasons why an Italian succeeds in 
 love as no other man does. ' L'art de bruler 
 silencieusement le coeur d'une femme "is a 
 supreme art with you. Compared with you, all 
 other men are children. You have been the 
 supreme masters of the great passion since the 
 days of Ovid." 
 
 " Because it is much more the supreme pursuit 
 of our lives than it is with other men. How can 
 Love be of much power where it is inferior to fox- 
 hunting, and a mere interlude when there is no 
 other sport to be had, as it is with Englishmen ?" 
 
 " And with a Frenchman it is always inferior 
 to himself ! " confessed the French Due, with a 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 smile. " At least they say so. But every hu- 
 man being loves his vanity first. ' Only wounded 
 my vanity ? ' poor Lord Strangford used to say. 
 ' Pray what dearer and more integral part of my- 
 self could you wound ? ' He was very right. If 
 we are not on good terms with ourselves we can 
 never prevail with others." 
 
 "Yet a vain man seldom succeeds with 
 women ? " 
 
 "A man who lets them see that he is vain 
 does not : that is another matter. Vanity ah ! 
 there is Miladi, she has plenty of vanity ; yet it 
 is of a grandiose kind, and it would only take a 
 little more time and the first grey hair to turn 
 it into dissatisfaction. All kinds of discontent are 
 only superh vanities. Byron's, Musset's, Boling- 
 Lroke's " 
 
 A horse nearly knocked the Due down in the 
 midst of his philosophies as he picked his way 
 delicately amongst the standing and moving car- 
 riages to the place where the white great-coats 
 with the black velvet collars of the Lady Hilda's 
 servants were visible. 
 
 The Lady Hilda's victoria stood in that open 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 89 
 
 square where it is the pleasure of fashionable 
 Floralia to stop its carriages in the course of the 
 drive before dinner. 
 
 The piazza is the most unlovely part of the 
 park : it has a gaunt red cafe and a desert of 
 hard-beaten sand, and in the middle there are 
 some few plants, and a vast quantity of iron 
 bordering laid out in geometrical patterns, with 
 more hard-beaten sand between them, this 
 being the modern Floralian idea of a garden ; to 
 which fatal idea are sacrificed the noble ilex 
 shades, the bird-filled cedar groves, the deep de- 
 licious dreamful avenues, the moss-grown ways, 
 and the leaf-covered fountains, worthy to shelter 
 Narcissus and to bathe Nausicaa, which their 
 wiser forefathers knew were alike the blessing 
 and the glory of this land of the sun. 
 
 Nevertheless perhaps because it is the last 
 place in the world where anybody would be sup- 
 posed ever voluntarily to stop a carriage here 
 motley modern society delights to group its fusing 
 nationalities ; and the same people who bored each 
 other in the morning's calls, and will bore each 
 other in the evening's receptions, bore each other 
 
00 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 sedulously in the open air, and would not omit 
 the sacred ceremonial for anything unless, 
 indeed, it rained. 
 
 Perhaps after all Floralia reads aright the 
 generation that visits it. The ilex shadows and 
 the cedar-groves need Virgil and Horace, Tasso 
 and Petrarca, Milton and Shelley. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, who never by any chance 
 paused in the piazzone, had stopped a moment 
 there to please Madame Mila, who, in the loveliest 
 Incroyahle bonnet, was seated beside her. 
 
 The men of their acquaintance flocked up to 
 the victoria. Lady Hilda paid them scanty 
 attention, and occupied herself buying flowers 
 of the poor women who lifted their fragrant 
 basket-loads to the carriage. Madame Mila 
 chattered like the brightest of parrakeets, and 
 was clamorous for news. 
 
 " Quid novi?" is the cry in Floralia from morn- 
 ing till night, as in Athens. The most popular 
 people are those who, when the article is not to 
 be had of original growth, can manufacture it 
 Political news nobody attends to in Floralia ; 
 financial news interests society a little more, be- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 91 
 
 cause everybody has stocks or shares in some- 
 thing somewhere ; but the news is Gossip, dear 
 delicious perennial ever-blessed gossip, that re- 
 ports a beloved friend in difficulties, a rival in 
 extremis, a neighbour no better than she should 
 be, and some exalted personage or another caught 
 hiding a king in his sleeve at cards, or kissing 
 his wife's lady-of-the-bedchamber. 
 
 Gossip goes the round of the city in winter as 
 the lemonade stands do in summer. 
 
 If you wish to be choye and asked out every 
 night, learn to manufacture it ; it is very easy : 
 take equal parts of flower of malice and essence of 
 impudence, with several pepper-corns of improba- 
 bility to spice it, some candied lemon-peel of 
 moral reflections, and a few drops of the ammonia 
 of indecency that will make it light of digestion, 
 and the toothsome morsel will procure you wel- 
 come everywhere. If you can also chop up any 
 real Paschal lamb of innocence in very fine 
 pieces, so that it is minced and hashed and 
 unrecognisable for ever, serve the mince with 
 the vinegar of malignity, and the fresh mint 
 of novelty, and you will be the very Careine 
 
92 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 of gossip henceforward. Kun 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 Due 
 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 hus- 
 band 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 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 93 
 
 ^ife have a friendship. Madame Mila scarcely 
 knew which refusal to condemn as the most heart- 
 less and the most vulgar. 
 
 The Lady Hilda dined with her on the 
 morrow ; and the little Comtesse, with the fine 
 instinct at discovering future sympathies of a 
 woman " qui a vecu," took care that Delia 
 Rocca took her cousin in to dinner. 
 
 " I would give all I possess to see Hilda atten- 
 drie" she said to herself: as what she pos- 
 sessed just then was chiefly an enormous quantity 
 of unpaid bills, perhaps she would not have lost 
 so very much. But the Lady Hilda was not 
 attendrie : she thought he talked better than most 
 men at least, differently, and he succeeded 
 : n interesting her, probably because he had been 
 so indifferent in calling upon her. That was all. 
 Besides, his manner was perfect ; it was as vieille 
 cour as M. de St. Louis's, and to the Italian 
 noble alone is given the union of stateliest 
 dignity with easiest grace. 
 
 Lady Hilda, who should have been born under 
 Louis Quatorze, had often suffered much in her 
 taste from an age when manner, except in the 
 
94 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 south, is only a tradition, smothered under cigar- 
 ash, and buried in a gun-case. 
 
 As for him, he mused, while he talked to her, on 
 the words of the Due, who had known her all her 
 life. Was it true that she had never felt even a 
 passing "weakness?" Was it certain that she 
 had always been as cold as she looked ? 
 
 He wished that he could be sure. 
 
 After all, she was a woman of wonderful charm, 
 though she did go about with Madame Mila, 
 smoke cigarettes after dinner, and correct you as 
 to the last mot made on the boulevards. He be- 
 gan to think that this was only the mere cachet 
 of the world she lived in ; only the mere accident 
 of contact and habit. 
 
 All women born under the Second Empire 
 have it more or less ; and, after all, she had but 
 little of it; she was very serene, very contemp- 
 tuous, very high-bred ; and her brilliant languid 
 hazel eyes looked so untroubled that it would 
 have moved any man into a wish to trouble their 
 still and luminous depths. 
 
 She seemed to him very objectless and some- 
 what cynicaL It was a pity. Nature had made 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 95 
 
 her perfect in face and form, and gifted her with 
 intelligence, and Fashion had made her useless, 
 tired, and vaguely cynical about everything, as 
 everybody else was in her world ; except that yet 
 larger number who resembled Madame Mila a 
 worse type still, according to his view. 
 
 It was a pity that the coldness and corruption 
 of the great world had entered thus deeply into 
 her; so he thought, watching the droop of her 
 long eyelashes, the curve of her beautiful mouth, 
 the even coming and going of her breath under 
 her shining necklace of opals and emeralds. 
 
 He began to believe that the Due was right. 
 There was no " past " in that calmest of indolent 
 glances. 
 
 "You smoke, Madame?" he said, a little 
 abruptly to her, after dinner. 
 
 She looked at her slender roll of paper. 
 
 " It is a habit like all the rest of the things 
 o.ie does. I do not care about it." 
 
 " Why do it then ? Are you not too proud to 
 follow a habit, and imitate a folly ? " 
 
 She smiled a little, and let the cigarette pale 
 its ineffectual fires and die out. 
 
86 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " They have not known how to deal with her,*' 
 he thought to himself; and he sat down and 
 played ecarte, and allowed her to win, though he 
 was one of the best players in Europe. 
 
 Fate had certainly been under the Incroyable 
 bonnet of Madame Mila. For during the evening 
 she suddenly recalled his villa, and announced 
 her intention of coming to see it. In her little 
 busy brain there was a clever notion that if she 
 only could get her cousin once drawn into what 
 the Due would call a " petite faiblesse," she her- 
 self would hear no more lectures about Maurice ; 
 and lectures are always tiresome, especially when 
 the lecturer has lent you several thousands, that 
 it would be the height of inconvenience ever to be 
 reminded to repay. 
 
 A woman who has " petites faiblesses " is 
 usually impatient with one who has none ; the 
 one who has none is a kind of standing insolence. 
 Women corrupt more women than men do. 
 Lovelace does not hate chastity in women ; but 
 Lady Bellaston does with all her might. 
 
 Pretty Madame Mila was too good-natured 
 and also too shallow to hate anything; but if 
 
IN A WINTER CITY 97 
 
 she could have seen her cousin " compromised " 
 she would have derived an exquisite satisfaction 
 and entertainment from the sight. She would 
 also have felt that Lady Hilda would have 
 become thereby more natural, and more com- 
 fortable company. 
 
 " Dear me, she might have done anything she 
 had liked all these years," thought Madame 
 Mila; "nobody would have known anything 
 and nothing would hurt her if it were known, 
 whilst she has all that money." 
 
 For Madame Mila herself, perched on one of 
 the very topmost rungs of the ladder of the 
 world's greatness, and able therefore to take a 
 bird's-eye view therefrom of everything, was very 
 shrewd in her way, and knew that society never 
 was known yet to quarrel with the owner of fifty 
 thousand a-year. 
 
 So she carried her airy little person, laden 
 this night with gold embroideries on dull 
 Venetian red, until she looked like a little figure 
 made in Lac, over to the ecarU table when the 
 ecartt was finished, and arranged a morning 
 at Palestrina for the day after to-morrow. He 
 
8 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 could only express his happiness and honour, 
 and his regrets that Palestrina was little more 
 than an empty shell for their inspection. 
 
 The day after the morrow was clear and cloud- 
 less, baliny and delicious; such days as the 
 Floralian climate casts here and there generously 
 amidst the winter cold as a foretaste of its para- 
 dise of summer. The snow was on the more 
 distant mountains of course, but only made the 
 landscape more lovely, changing to the softest 
 blush colour and rose under the brightness of 
 the noonday sun. The fields were green with 
 the springing cereals ; the pine-woods were filling 
 with violets; the water-courses were brimming 
 and boisterously joyous. 
 
 It was winter still; but the sort of winter 
 that one would expect in Fairyland or in the 
 planet Venus. 
 
 Madame Mila, clad in the strictest directoire 
 costume, with a wonderful hat on her head that 
 carried feathers, grasses, oleander flowers, and a 
 bird of Dutch Guiana, and was twisted up on one 
 side in a miraculous manner, descended with 
 her Maurice to the Lady Hilda's victoria, lent 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 99 
 
 her for the day. To drive into the country at 
 all was an act abominable and appalling to all her 
 ideas. 
 
 In Paris, except on race days, she never went 
 further than the lake, and never showed her 
 toilettes in the Assembly at Versailles, because 
 of the endless, drive necessary as a means to get 
 there. 
 
 In country houses she carefully kept her own 
 room till about five o'clock; and, when forced 
 for her health to go to Vichy or St. Moritz, or 
 any such place, she played cards in the mornings, 
 and when she was obliged to go out, looked at 
 the other invalids' dresses. Mountains were 
 only unpleasant things to be tunnelled ; forests 
 were tolerable, because one could wear such 
 pretty Louis Quinze hunting-habits and the curie 
 by torchlight was nice ; the sea again was made 
 endurable by bathing costumes, and it was fun 
 to go and tuck up your things and hunt for 
 prawns or pearls in the rock-pools and shallows 
 it gave rise to many very pretty situations. But 
 merely to drive into the country ! it was only 
 fit occupation for a maniac. Though she had 
 
 H 2 
 
100 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 proposed it herself, the patient Maurice had a 
 very mauvais quart-d'heure as they drove. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, who was too truly great an 
 elegante ever to condescend in the open air to 
 the eccentricities and bizarreries of Madame 
 Mila mountebankisms worthy a travelling show, 
 she considered them to be was clad in her black 
 Babies, which contrasted so well with the fairness 
 of her skin, and drove out with the Princess 
 Olga ; Carlo Maremma and M. de St. Louis front- 
 ing them in the Schouvaloff barouche. She 
 did not hate the cold, and shiver from the fresh 
 sea-wind, and worry about the badness of the 
 steep roads as Madame Mila did ; on the con- 
 trary, she liked the drive, long though it was, 
 and felt a vague interest in the first sight of 
 Palestrina, its towers and belfries shining white 
 on the mountain side, with the little villages 
 clustered under its broad dark ring of forest. 
 
 "What a pity that Paolo is so poor!" said 
 Carlo Maremma, looking upward at it. 
 
 " He carries his poverty with infinite grace/ 1 
 said the Princess Olga. 
 
 " Eft is worthy of riches," said the Due. 
 
IN A WINDER CITY. 101 
 
 Lady Hilda said nothing. 
 
 Palestrina was twelve miles and more from the 
 city, and stood on the high hills facing the 
 south-west ; it was half fortress, half palace ; in 
 early times its lords had ruled from its height all 
 the country round ; and later on, in the latter half 
 of the fifteenth century, a great Cardinal of the 
 Delia Rocca had made it into as sumptuous a 
 dwelling-place as Caprarola or Poggio a Cajano. 
 
 Subsequently the family had ranged itself 
 against the ruling faction of the province, and 
 had suffered from war and confiscation; still 
 later, Palestrina had been plundered by the 
 French troops of Napoleon; yet, despoiled and 
 impoverished as it was, it was majestic still, and 
 even beautiful ; for., unlike most such places, it had 
 kept its girdle of oak and ilex woods ; and its 
 gardens, though wild and neglected, were unshorn 
 of their fair proportions ; and the fountains 
 fell into their marble basins, and splashed the 
 maiden -hair ferns that hung over them as they 
 had done in another age for the delight of the 
 great Cardinal and his favourites. 
 
 Delia Rocca received them in the southern 
 
102 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 loggia, a beautiful vaulted and frescoed open gal- 
 lery, designed by Bramante, and warm in the 
 noonday sun, as though January were June. 
 
 A king could not have had more grace of 
 welcome and dignity of courtesy than this ruined 
 gentleman he had a very perfect manner, cer- 
 tainly, thought Lady Hilda once again. She was 
 one of those women (they are many) upon whom 
 manner makes more impression than mind or 
 morals. Why should it not ? It is the charm 
 of life and the touchstone of breeding. 
 
 There was only one friend with him, a great 
 minister, who had retired from the world and 
 given himself up to the culture of roses and 
 strawberries. There was a simple repast, from 
 the produce of his own lands, ready in what had 
 been once the banqueting hall. It was made 
 graceful by the old Venetian glass, the old 
 Urbino plates, the old Cellini salt-cellars ; and 
 by grapes, regina and salamana, saved from the 
 autumn, and bouquets of Parma violets and 
 Bengal roses, in old blue Savona vases. It 
 was a frugal meal, but fit for the Tale-tellers of 
 the Decameron. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 103 
 
 They rambled over the great building first, 
 with its vast windows showing the wide land- 
 scape of mountain and plain, and far away the 
 golden domes and airy spires of the city shining 
 through a soft mist of olive trees. The glory of 
 this house was gone, but it was beautiful still 
 with the sweet clear sunlight streaming through 
 its innumerable chambers, and touching the soft 
 hues of frescoed walls that had grown faded 
 with age, but had been painted by Spinello, by 
 Francia, by the great Frate, and by a host whose 
 names were lost, of earnest workers, and men 
 with whom art had been religion. 
 
 It was all dim and worn and grey with the 
 passage of time; but it was harmonious, ma- 
 jestic, tranquil. It was like the close of a great 
 life withdrawn from the world into a cloistered 
 solitude and content to be alone with its God. 
 
 "Do not wish for riches," said the Lady 
 Hilda to him, as he said something to her of it. 
 " If you had riches you would desecrate this ; you 
 would ' restore ' it, you would * embellish ' it, 
 you would ruin it." 
 
 He smiled a little sadly. 
 
104 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 "As it is, I can only keep the rains from enter- 
 ing and the rats from destroying it. Poverty, 
 Madame, is only poetical to those who do not 
 suffer it. Look ! " he added, with a laugh, "you 
 will not find a single chair, I fear, that is not 
 in tatters." 
 
 She glanced at the great old ebony chair she 
 was resting in, with its rich frayed tapestry seat, 
 and its carved armorial bearings. 
 
 " I have suffered much more from the staring, 
 gilded, and satin abominations in a millionaire's 
 drawing-room. You are ungrateful " 
 
 " And you, Madame, judge of pains that have 
 never touched, and cannot touch you. However, 
 I can be but too glad that Palestrina pleases you 
 in any way. It has the sunshine of heaven, 
 though not of fortune." 
 
 "And I am sure you would not give it up for 
 all the wealth of the Kothschilds." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " How lovely this place would look,*' Madame 
 Mila was saying at the same moment, out of his 
 hearing, to the Princess Olga, " if Owen Jones 
 could renovate it and Huby furnish it. Fancy 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 105 
 
 it with all the gilding re -gilded, and the pictures 
 restored, and Aubusson and Persian carpets 
 everywhere, and all those horrid old tapestries, 
 that must he full of spiders, pulled down and 
 burnt. What a heavenly place it would be and 
 what balls one might give in it ! Why, it would 
 hold ten thousand people ! " 
 
 "Poor Paolo will never be able to do it," said 
 the Princess Schouvaloff, " unless " 
 
 She glanced at the Lady Hilda where she sat, 
 at the further end of the chamber, whilst Delia 
 Eocca leaned against the embrasure of the 
 window. 
 
 " I think she has a fancy for him," said 
 Madam Mila. " But as for marrying, you know, 
 that, of course, is out of the question." 
 
 "I don't see why," said the Princess. 
 
 " Oh, out of the question ; " said Madame Mila, 
 hastily. "But if she should take a liking to him, 
 it would be great fun. She's been so awfully 
 exaltee about all that sort of thing. Dear me, 
 what a pity all those nasty, old, dull frescoes 
 can't be scraped off and something nice and 
 bright, like what they paint now, be put there ; 
 
106 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 but I suppose it would take so much money. I 
 should hang silk over them ; all these clouds of 
 pale angels would make me melancholy mad. 
 There is no style I care a hit for hut Louis 
 Quinze. I am having new wall hangings for my 
 salon done by the Ste. Marie Reparatrice girls ; 
 a lovely green satin apple-green embroidered 
 with wreaths of roses and broom, after flower- 
 groups by Fantin. Louis Quinze is so cheerful, 
 and lets you have such lots of gilding, and the 
 tables have such nice straight legs, and you always 
 feel with it as if you were in a theatre and expect- 
 ing the Jeune Premier to enter. Here one feels 
 as if one were in a church." 
 
 " A monastery," suggested Princess Olga. 
 
 Thereon they went and had their luncheon, and 
 Madame Mila studying the Capo da Monte des- 
 sert-service, appraised its value for she was a 
 shrewd little woman and wondered, if Paolo 
 della Rocca were so poor as they said, why did 
 he not send up all these old porcelains and 
 lovely potteries to the Hotel Drouot: Capo da 
 Monte, she reflected, sells for more than its 
 weight in gold, now that it is the rage of the 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 107 
 
 fashion. She felt inclined to suggest this to him, 
 only she was not quite sure how he might take it. 
 Italians, she had heard, were so absurdly proud 
 and susceptible. 
 
 After luncheon, they went into the green old 
 gardens ; green with ilex and arbutus and laurel 
 and cypress avenues, although it was mid-winter ; 
 and the great minister discoursed on the charms 
 of the country and the beauty of solitude in a 
 way that should almost have awakened the envy 
 of Horace in his grave; and the Due de St. 
 Louis disagreed with him in witty arguments that 
 might have made the shades of Rochefoucauld 
 and Rivarol jealous. 
 
 And they rambled and idled and talked and 
 sauntered in those charming hours which an 
 Italian villa alone can create ; and then the Ave 
 Maria chimed from the belfries of a convent up 
 above on the hill, and the winds grew chill, and 
 the carriages were called round to the steps of the 
 southern ten-ace, and the old steward brought to 
 each lady the parting gift of a great cluster of 
 the sweet Parma violets. 
 
 "Well, it's been pleasanter than I thought 
 
108 J.V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 for," said Madame Mila, rolling homeward. 
 " But oh, this wretched, odious road ' I shall 
 catch my death of cold, and I daresay we shall 
 all be killed on these horrible hills in the dark ! " 
 Lady Hilda was very silent as they drove 
 downward, and left Palestrina alone to grow grey 
 in the shades of the twilight. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " I THINK Italians are like Russian tea ; they 
 
 spoil you for any other " wrote Lady Hilda 
 
 to her brother Clairvaux. It was not a very clear 
 phrase, nor very grammatical ; but she knew 
 what she meant herself, which is more than all 
 writers can say they do. 
 
 Russian tea, or rather tea imported through 
 Russia, is so much softer and of so much sweeter 
 and subtler a flavour, that once drinking it you 
 will find all other tea after it seem flat or coarse. 
 When she had written this sentiment, however, 
 she tore up the sheet of note paper which 
 contained it, and tossed it in the fire ; after all, 
 Clairvaux would not understand he never un- 
 
110 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 derstood anything, dear old fellow and he would 
 be very likely to say all sorts of foolish things 
 while there was not the slightest reason for any 
 one's supposing. 
 
 " Do come out here as soon as you can," she 
 wrote instead. " Of course it will all depend on 
 your racing engagements ; but if you do go to 
 Paris to see Charles Lafitte, as you say, pray 
 come on Lere. Not that you will care for 
 Floralia at all ; you never do care for these art 
 cities, and it is its art, and its past, and its people 
 that make its irresistible charm. Floralia is 
 so graceful and so beautiful and so full of noble 
 memories, that one cannot but feel the motley 
 society of our own present day as a sort of dese- 
 cration to it; the cocottes and coc<\dettes, the 
 wheel-skaters and poker-players, the smokers and 
 the baigneuses, the viveurs and the viveuses of 
 our time suit it sadly ill ; it wants the scholars 
 of Academe, the story-tellers of Boccaccio ; it 
 wants Sordello and Stradella, Desdemona and 
 Giulietta. 
 
 " One feels oneself not one half good enough 
 for the stones one treads upon ; life here 
 
IN A WINTER CTTY. Ill 
 
 should be a perpetual Kyrie Eleison ; instead of 
 which it is only a chorus of Offenbach's. Not 
 that society anywhere, now, ever does rise higher 
 than that; only here it jars on one more than 
 elsewhere, and seems as profane as if one 'played 
 ball with Homer's skull.' 
 
 " Floralia is a golden Ostensoir filled with 
 great men's bones, and we choke it up with cigar 
 ashes and champagne dregs. It cannot be 
 helped, I suppose. The destiny of the age 
 seems to be to profane all that have preceded it. 
 It creates nothing it desecrates everything. 
 Society does not escape from the general influ- 
 ence ; its kings are all kings of Brentford. 
 
 " Mila who is here and happy as a bird 
 thinks Jack Cade and the Offenbach chorus the 
 perfection of delight at all times. 
 
 " For myself, I confess, neither entertain me ; 
 I fail to see the charm of a drawing-room demo- 
 cracy decollete and decousu ; and I never did 
 appreciate ladies who pass their lives in balanc- 
 ing themselves awkwardly on the bar of Dumas's 
 famous Triangle ; but that may be a prejudice 
 Mila says that it is. 
 
113 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " By-the-by, that odious young Des Gommeux 
 has followed her here I make myself disagree- 
 able to him. I cannot do more. Spiridion 
 has never interfered, and ' on ne peut pas etre 
 plus royaliste que le roi.' But you will skip 
 all this, or give it to your wife. I know I 
 never read letters myself, so why should I 
 expect you to do so ? I am so sorry to 
 hear of Vieille Garde's sprain ; it is too vex- 
 ing for you, just as he was so high in 
 the betting. I hope Sister to Simonides turns 
 out worth all we gave for her. There will be 
 racing here in April, but it would only make you 
 laugh which would be rude ; or swear which 
 would be worse. So please come long before it." 
 
 She folded up her letter, wrote " Pray try and 
 come soon " across the top of it, and directed the 
 envelope to the Earl of Clairvaux, Broomsden, 
 Northampton, and then was provoked to think 
 that she did not want good, clumsy, honest 
 Clairvaux to come at all not in her heart of 
 hearts, because Clairvaux was always asking ques- 
 tions, and going straight to the bottom of things 
 in his own simple, sturdy fashion, and never 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 113 
 
 understood anything that was in the very least 
 complex. 
 
 And then again she was more irritated still 
 with herself, for admitting even to her own 
 thoughts that there was anything complex, or 
 that she did not want to examine too closely 
 just yet. And then she sat and looked into the 
 fire, and thought of Palestrina, with its sweet 
 faint scent of Parma violets, and its dim noble 
 frescoes, and its mountain solitudes, under the 
 clear winter moon. 
 
 She sat dreaming about it a long time for 
 her, because she was not a person that dreamed 
 at all usually. Her life was too brilliant, and too 
 much occupied, and too artificial. She was 
 thinking, with a great deal of money, without 
 desecrating it by "restoration;" but by bringing 
 all the art knowledge in the world to its enrich- 
 ment, it would be possible to make it as great as 
 it had been in the days of its cardinal. What 
 a pastime it would be, what an interest, what an 
 occupation almost for a lifetime to render that 
 grand old palace once more the world's wonder it 
 had been in the sixteenth century ! 
 
114 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Then she rose suddenly with an impatient 
 sigh, and went into her bedroom, and found 
 fault with her maids : they had put Valen- 
 ciennes on her petticoats, and she hated Valen- 
 ciennes no other lace had been so cheapened 
 by imitation ; they had put out her marron 
 velvet with the ostrich feathers for that day's 
 wearing, when they should have laid out the 
 silver-grey cloth with the Genoa buttons; they 
 were giving her glace gloves instead of peau 
 de Suede ; they had got out Pompadour boots, and 
 she required Paysanne shoes ; it was a fine dry 
 day. In point of fact, everything was wrong, and 
 they were idiots, and she told them so as strongly 
 as a high-bred lady can demean herself to speak. 
 Each costume was put all together dress, bon- 
 net, boots, gloves everything ; what business 
 had they to go and mix them all up and make 
 everything wrong ? 
 
 Her maids were used to her displeasure ; but 
 she was very generous, and if they were ill or 
 in sorrow she was kind, so that they bore it 
 meekly, and contented themselves with complain- 
 ing of her in all directions to their allies. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 115 
 
 " If she would only have her petites affaires like 
 i>ther ladies she would be much easier to con- 
 tent/' said her head maid, who had served the 
 aristocracy ever since the earliest days of the 
 Second Empire. 
 
 When there were no lovers, there were much 
 fewer douceurs and perquisites; however, they 
 endured that deprivation because Miladi was so 
 very rich, and so easily plundered. 
 
 Miladi, now, arrayed in the silver-grey cloth 
 with the Genoa buttons and the marabout feather 
 trimming, went out to her victoria, en route to the 
 galleries, of which she never tired, and the visits 
 which immeasurably bored her. She had been in 
 the great world for ten years, and the great world 
 is too small to divert one for very long, unless one 
 be as Madame Mila. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Lady Hilda found that 
 Floralia interested her more than she would have 
 believed that anything would do. 
 
 After all, Floralia was charming by the present, 
 not only by the past. 
 
 If it had its kings of Brentford, with its 
 Offenbach choruses, so had every other place ; if 
 
 i a 
 
116 IN A WINTER CITf. 
 
 it had a pot pourri of nationalties, it had some of 
 the most agreeable persons of every nation ; if 
 trying to be very naughty it generally only became 
 very dull that was the doom of modern society 
 everywhere. 
 
 There were charming houses in it, where there 
 Were real wit, real music, and real welcome. If 
 people saw each other too often, strong friend- 
 chips could come out of such frequency as well 
 as animosities ; and there was a great charm in 
 the familiar, easy, pleasant intimacies which so 
 naturally grew out of the artistic idling under 
 these sombre and noble walls, and in the palaces 
 where all the arts once reigned. 
 
 She had begun to take the fair city into her 
 heart, as everyone who has a heart must needs 
 do, having once dwelt within the olive girdle of 
 its' pure pale hills, and seen its green waters wash 
 the banks erst peopled with the gorgeous splen- 
 dours of the Renaissance. 
 
 She even began to like her daily life in it ; the 
 mornings dreamed away before some favourite 
 Giorgione or Veronese, or spent in dim old 
 tfhops full of the oddest mingling of rubbish and of 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 117 
 
 treasure ; the twilights spent in picture-like old 
 chambers, where dames of high degree had made 
 their winter- quarters, fragrant with flowers and 
 quaint with old tapestries and porcelains; the 
 evenings passed in a society which, too motley to 
 be intimate, yet too personal to dare be witty, 
 was gradually made more than endurable to her, 
 by the sound of one voice for which she listened 
 more often than she knew, by the sight of one 
 face which grew more necessary to her than she 
 was aware. 
 
 " If one could be only quite alone here it would 
 be too charming," she thought, driving this morn- 
 ing, while the sun shone on the golden reaches 
 of the river, and the softly-coloured marbles 
 caught the light, and the picturesque old shops 
 gleamed many-hued as harlequin under the beet- 
 ling brows of projecting roofs, and the carved stone 
 of dark archways. 
 
 But if she had looked close into her own heart 
 she would have seen that the solitude of her 
 ideal would have been one like the French poet's 
 solitude a deux. 
 
 She did not go, after all, to her visits ; she went 
 
118 IJV T A WINTER CITY. 
 
 instead, in and out of the studios whose artists 
 adored her, though she was terribly hard to 
 please, and had much more acquaintance with 
 art than is desirable in a purchaser. 
 
 In one of the studios she chanced to meet the 
 master of Palestrina ; and he went with her to 
 another atelier, and another and another. 
 
 She had her Paysanne shoes on, and her gold- 
 headed cane, and let her victoria stand still while 
 she walked from one to the other of those sculp- 
 tors' and painters' dens, which lie so close toge- 
 ther, like beavers' work in the old grey quarters 
 of the city. 
 
 Up and down the dark staircases, and in and 
 oat the gloomy vaulted passages, her silver-grey 
 cloth with the marabout ruches gleamed and 
 glistened, and to many of the artists proved as 
 beneficent as a silvery cloud to the thirsty fields 
 in summer. 
 
 She was surprised to find how much she likeA 
 it. There was not much genius, and there was * 
 great deal of bad drawing, and worse modelling, 
 and she had educated herself in the very strictest 
 and coldest canons of art* and really cared for 
 
IN A WINTER CITY 119 
 
 nothing later than Luca Signorelli, and abhorred 
 Canova and everything that has come after him. 
 
 But there were some little figures in marble of 
 young children that she could conscientiously 
 buy; and the little Meissonier and Fortuny- 
 like pictures were clever, if they were mere trick- 
 work and told no story; and the modern oak 
 carvings were really good ; and on the whole she 
 enjoyed her morning unusually ; and her com- 
 panion looked pleased, because she found things 
 to praise. 
 
 As she walked, with Delia Rocca beside her, in 
 and out the dusky passage ways, with the obnoxious 
 Valenciennes under her skirts sweeping the stones, 
 and her silvery marabouts glancing like hoar- 
 frost in the shadows of the looming walls, the 
 Lady Hilda felt very happy, and on good terms 
 with herself and the world. No doubt, she 
 thought, it was the fresh west wind blowing 
 up the river from the sea which had done her so 
 much good. 
 
 The golden Ostensoir, to which she had 
 likened Floralia, no longer seemed filled with 
 cigar-ash and absinthe dregs ; but full of the 
 
120 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 fragrant rose-leaves of an imperishable Past, and 
 the shining sands of a sweet unspent Time. 
 
 She made a poor sculptor happy for a year ; she 
 freed a young and promising painter from a heavy 
 debt ; she was often impatient with their produc- 
 tions, but she was most patient with their 
 troubles. 
 
 She was only a woman of the world, touched 
 for a day into warmer sympathies, but the bless- 
 ings she drew down on her sank somehow into 
 her heart, and made her half ashamed, half glad. 
 
 What was the use of writing fine contemptuous 
 things of society unless one tried to drop oneself 
 some little holy relic into the golden Ostensoir ? 
 She went home contented, and was so gentle with 
 her maids that they thought she must be going 
 to be unwell. 
 
 Her friend the Princess Olga came to chat 
 with her, and they had their tea cosily in her 
 dressing-room ; and at eight o'clock she went to 
 dine with Mrs. Washington, an American Paris 
 ienne or Parisian American, known wherevei 
 the world of fashion extended, and was taken inte 
 dinner by the Duca della Eocca. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 121 
 
 After dinner there was a new tenor, who was 
 less of a delusion than most new tenors are; 
 and there was a great deal of very eesthetic and 
 abstruse talk about music ; she said little herself, 
 but sat and listened to Delia Rocca, who spoke 
 often and eloquently, with infinite grace and 
 accurate culture. To a woman who has cared 
 for no one all her life, there is the strangest and 
 sweetest pleasure in finding at last one voice 
 whose mere sound is melody to her. 
 
 On the whole she went to bed still with that 
 dreamful content which had come on her in the day 
 no doubt with the fresh sea wind. She knew 
 that she had looked at her best in a dress of pale 
 dead gold, with old black Spanish lace ; and she 
 had only one regret that in too soft a mood she 
 had allowed an English person, a Lady Feather- 
 leigh, of whom she did not approve, to be pre- 
 sented to her. 
 
 She was habitually the one desire and the one 
 despair of all her countrywomen. 
 
 Except so far as her physical courage, her skill 
 in riding, and her beautiful complexion, which no 
 cold could redden, and no heat could change, 
 
122 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 might be counted as national characteristics, the 
 Lady Hilda was a very un-English Englishwoman 
 in everything. 
 
 Indeed your true elegante is raised high above 
 all such small things as nationalities ; she floats 
 serenely in an atmosphere far too elevated to be 
 coloured by country ; a neutral ground on which 
 the leaders of every civilized land meet far away 
 from all ordinary mortality. 
 
 In Floralia she found a few such choice spirits 
 accustomed to breathe the same aether as hei- 
 self, and with those she lived, carefully avoiding 
 the Penal Settlement as she continued to call the 
 cosmopolitan society which was outside the zone 
 of her own supreme fashion. 
 
 She saw it, indeed, in ball-rooms and morning 
 receptions ; it sighed humbly after her, pined for 
 her notice, and would have been happy if she 
 would but even have recompensed it by an inso- 
 lence, but she merely ignored its existence, and 
 always locked over its head innocently and cruelly 
 with that divine serenity of indifference and dis- 
 dain with which Nature had so liberally endowed 
 her. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 123 
 
 " Why should I know them ? They wouldn't 
 please me," she would say to those who ventured 
 to remonstrate, and the answer was unanswer- 
 able. 
 
 "I can't think how you manage, Hilda, to keep 
 BO clear of people," said Madame Mila, envi- 
 ously. " Now, / get inundated with hosts of the 
 horridest " 
 
 "Because you cheapen yourself," said Lady 
 Hilda, very coolly. 
 
 " I never could keep people off me/' pursued 
 the Comtesse. " When Spiridion had the Em- 
 bassy in London, it was just the same ; I was 
 inundated ! It's good nature, I suppose. Cer- 
 tainly, you haven't got too much of that." 
 
 Lady Hilda smiled ; she thought of those six 
 or eight thousands which had gone for Madame 
 Mila's losses at play. 
 
 " Good nature is a very indifferent sort of 
 quality," she answered. " It is compounded of 
 weakness, laziness, and vulgarity. Generally 
 speaking, it is only a desire for popularity, and 
 there is nothing more vulgar than that." 
 
 "I don't see that it is vulgar at all," said 
 
124 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Madame Mila, with some sharpness. " I like 
 to think I am popular ; to see a mob look after 
 me; to have the shop-boys rush out to get a 
 glimpse of me ; to hear the crowd on a race-day 
 call out ' ain't she a rare 'un ! my eye, ain't she 
 fit ! ' just as if I were one of the mares. I 
 often give a crossing- sweeper a shilling in Lon- 
 don, just to make him ' bless my pretty eyes.' 
 Why, even when I go to that beastly place of 
 Spiridion's in Russia, I make the hideous serfs in 
 love with me ; it puts one on good terms with 
 oneself. I often think when the people in the 
 streets don't turn after me as I go then I shall 
 know that I'm old ! " 
 
 Lady Hilda's eyebrows expressed unutterable 
 contempt ; these were sentiments to her entirely 
 incomprehensible. 
 
 " How very agreeable to make the streets the 
 barometer of one's looks ' fair or foul.' So you 
 live in apprehension of a railway porter's indiffer- 
 ence, and only approve of yourself if a racing 
 tout smiles ! My dear Mila, I never did believe 
 you would have gone lower in the scale of human 
 adorers than your Gomineux and Poisseux." 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 125 
 
 " At all events I am not so vain as you are, 
 Hilda," retorted the Comtesse. " You approve of 
 yourself eternally, whether all the world hates 
 you or not. I remember Charlie Barrington say- 
 ing of you once ' I wonder why that woman 
 keeps straight why should she ? She don't care 
 a hang what anybody says of her/ * 
 
 ' How discerning of Lord Barrington ! If 
 people only * keep straight ' for the sake of what 
 other people say of them, I think they may just 
 as well ' go off the rails ' in any manner they like. 
 Certainly, what I chose to do, I should do, with- 
 out reference to the approbation of the mob 
 either of the streets or of the drawing-rooms." 
 
 "Exactly what Barrington said," returned 
 Madame Mila ; " but then why do you I mean, 
 why don't you amuse yourself ? " 
 
 The Lady Hilda laughed. 
 
 " My dear ! the Gommeux and the Poisseux 
 would not amuse me. I am not so happily con- 
 stituted as you are.' 1 
 
 Madame Mila coloured. 
 
 "That's all very fine talk, but you know it 
 isn't natural " 
 
128 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " To live deoeiitly ? no, I suppose it is not 
 now-a-days. Perhaps it never was. But, my 
 dear Mila, you needn't be too disquieted about 
 rue, If it make you any more comfortable as to 
 my sanity, I can assure you it is not virtue ; no 
 one knows such a word ; it is only indifference." 
 
 "You are very queer, Hilda," said Madame 
 Mila, impatiently ; " all I know is, I should like 
 to see you in love, and see what you'd say 
 then." 
 
 The Lady Hilda, who was never more moved 
 by her feather-headed cousin's words than a rock 
 by a butterfly, felt a sudden warmth on her face 
 perhaps of anger. 
 
 " In love ! " she echoed, with less languor and 
 more of impetuosity than she had ever displayed, 
 " are you ever in love, any of you, ever? You 
 have senses and vanity and an inordinate fear of 
 not being in the fashion and so you take your 
 lovers as you drink your stimulants and wear 
 your wigs and tie your skirts back because 
 everybody else does it, and not to do it is to be 
 odd, or prudish, or something you would hate to 
 be called. Love ! it is an unknown thing to you all. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 127 
 
 You have a sort of miserable hectic passion, per- 
 haps, that is a drug you take as you take chloro- 
 dyne just to excite you and make your jaded 
 nerves a little alive again, and yet you are such 
 cowards that you have not even the courage of 
 passion, but label your drug Friendship, and beg 
 Society to observe that you only keep it for 
 family uses like arnica or like glycerine. You want 
 notoriety ; you want to indulge your fancies, and 
 yet keep your place in the world. You like to 
 drag a young man about by a chain, as if he were 
 the dancing monkey that you depended upon for 
 subsistence. You like other women to see that you 
 are not too passtfe to be every whit as improper 
 as if you were twenty. You like to advertise 
 your successes as it were with drum and trumpet, 
 because if you did not, people might begin to 
 doubt that you had any. You like all that, and 
 you like to feel there is nothing you do not know 
 and no length you have not gone, and so you 
 ring all the changes on all the varieties of 
 intrigue and sensuality, and go over the gamut 
 of sickly sentiment and nauseous license as an 
 orchestra tunes its strings up every night ! That 
 
128 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 is what all you people call love ; I am content 
 enough to have no knowledge of it " 
 
 " Good gracious, Hilda ! " said Madame Mila, 
 with wide-open eyes of absolute amazement; 
 " you talk as if you were one of the angry hus- 
 bands in a comedy of Feuillet or Dumas. I don't 
 think you know anything about it at all ; how 
 should you ? You only admire yourself, and like 
 art and all that kind of thing, and are as cold as 
 ice to everybody. 'A la place du cceur, vous 
 n'avez qu'un caillou;' I've read that somewhere." 
 
 " ' Elle n'a qu'un ecusson,'" corrected Lady 
 Hilda, her serenity returning. " If Hugo had 
 known much about women he would have said 
 'qu'un chiffon ; ' but perhaps a dissyllable 
 wouldn't have scanned " 
 
 " You never will convince me," continued 
 Madame de Caviare, " that you would not be a 
 happier woman if you had what you call senses 
 and the rest of it. One can't live without sensa- 
 tions and emotions of some sort. You never feel 
 any except before a bit of Kronenthal china or a 
 triptych of some old fogey of a painter. You do care 
 awfully about your horses to be sure, but then as 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 129 
 
 you don't bet on anything, I don't see what ex- 
 citement you can get out of them. You won't 
 play which is the best thing to take to of all, 
 because it will last ; the older they grow, the 
 wilder women get about it ; look at Spiridion's 
 aunt Seraphine over eighty as keen as a 
 ferret over her winnings, and as fierce as a 
 tom-cat over her losses. Now, that is a thing 
 that can't hurt any one, let you say what you 
 like ; everybody plays, why won't you ? If you 
 lost half your income in one night, it wouldn't 
 ruin you, and you have no idea how delicious it 
 is to get dizzy over the cards ; you know one bets 
 
 even at poker to any amount " 
 
 " Thanks; it won't tempt me," answered Lady 
 Hilda. " I have played at Baden, to see if it 
 would amuse me, and it didn't amuse me in the 
 least ; no more than M. des Gommeux does ! 
 My dearest Mila, I am sure that you people who 
 do excite yourselves over baccarat and poker, and 
 can feel really flattered at having a Maurice always 
 in attendance, and can divert yourselves with 
 oyster suppers and masked balls and cotillon 
 riots, are the happy women of this world, that I 
 
130 JN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 quite grant you : oysters and Maurices and co- 
 tillon and poker are so very easy to be got " 
 
 " And men like women who like them ! " 
 " That I grant too; poker and cotillons 
 don't exact any very fine manners, and men 
 nowadays always like to be, metaphorically, in 
 their smoking-coats. Only you see we are not 
 always all constituted of the same fortunate dis- 
 position ; poker and cotillons only bora me. 
 You should think it my misfortune not my fault. 
 I am sure it must be charming to drink a quan- 
 tity of champagne, and whirl round like a South- 
 sea islander, and play pranks that pass in a 
 palace though the police would interfere in a 
 dancing garden, and be found by the sun drink- 
 ing soup at a supper-table : I am sure it must be 
 quite delightful. Only you see it doesn't amuse 
 me ; no more than scrambling amongst a pack 
 of cards flung on their faces, which you say is 
 delightful too; or keeping a Maurice in your 
 pocket, like your cigar-case and your handker- 
 chief, which you say is most delightful of all. 
 But good bye, my dear, we shall quarrel if we 
 talk much longer like this ; and we must not 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 131 
 
 quarrel till to-morrow morning, because your 
 Dissiruulee dress will look nothing without my 
 Austraisienne one. What time shall I call for 
 you ? Make it as late as you can. I shall only 
 just show myself." 
 
 " Three o'clock, then that is quite early 
 enough," muttered Madame Mila, somewhat 
 sulkily ; but she had teazed and prayed her 
 cousin into accompanying her in Louis Seize 
 costumes, most carefully compiled by Worth 
 from engravings and pictures of the period, to 
 the Trasimene costume ball, and would not fall 
 out with her just on the eve of it, because she 
 knew their entrance would be the effect of the 
 night, accompanied as they would be by the Due 
 de St. Louis and M. des Gommeux as Grand 
 Ecuyer de France, and as Petit Maitre en 
 chenille, of the same century. 
 
 " Say half-past," answered the Lady Hilda, 
 as she closed the door and went into her own 
 rooms on the opposite side of the staircase. 
 
 " I really begin to think she is jealous of 
 Maurice and in love with him ! " thought Madame 
 Mila, in whose eyes Maurice was irresistible, 
 
 & 2 
 
132 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 though with the peculiar optimism of ladies in 
 her position she was perfectly certain that he 
 was adamant also to all save herself. And the 
 idea of her fastidious cousin's hopeless passion 
 so tickled her fancy that she laughed herself into 
 a good humour as her maids disrobed her ; and 
 she curled herself up in her bed to get a good 
 night's sleep out before donning the Dissimulee 
 costume for the Trasimene ball, so that she 
 should go at half-past three " as fresh as paint," 
 in the most literal sense of the word, to all the 
 joyous rioting of the cotillon which Maurice was 
 to lead. 
 
 " You shine upon us late, Madame," said 
 Delia Rocca, advancing to meet the Lady Hilda, 
 when they reached, at four o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, the vast and lofty rooms glittering with fancy 
 dresses. 
 
 " I only came at all to please Mila, and she 
 only comes for the cotillon," she answered him, 
 and she thought how well he looked as she 
 glanced at him. He wore a white Louis Treize 
 Mousquetaire dress, and he had the collar of the 
 Golden Fleece about his throat, for, amongst his 
 
fN A WINTER CITY. 133 
 
 many useless titles, and barren dignities, he was, 
 like man-/ an Italian noble, also a grandee of 
 Spain. 
 
 " You do not dance, Madame ? " he asked. 
 
 "Very seldom," she answered, as she accepted 
 his arm to move through the rooms. " When 
 mediaeval dresses came in, dancing should have 
 been banished. Who could dance well in a long 
 close clinging robe tightly tied back, and heavy 
 with gold thread and bullion fringes ; they should 
 revive the minuet; we might go through that 
 without being ridiculous. But if they will have 
 the cotillon instead, they should dress like the 
 girls in Offenbach's pieces, as many of them 
 happen to be to-night. I do not object to a 
 mixture of epochs in furniture, but romping 
 in a renaissance skirt ! that is really almost 
 blasphemy enough to raise the ghost of 
 Titian ! " 
 
 " I am afraid Madama Pamphlet and the 
 Fiammina must have romped sometimes," said 
 Delia Bocca with a smile. " But then you will 
 say the Decadence had already cast its shadow 
 before it." 
 
134 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Yes ; but there never was an age so vulgar as 
 our own," said the Lady Hilda. " That I ana 
 positive of ; look, even peasants are vulgar now : 
 they wear tall hats and tawdry bonnets on 
 Sundays ; and, as for our society, it is ' rowdy : ' 
 there is no other word for it, if you understand 
 what that means." 
 
 " Canaille ? " 
 
 " Yes, Canaille. M. de St. Louis says, the 
 ' femme comme il faut ' of his youth is extinct 
 as the dodo : language is slang, society is a 
 mob, dress is display, amusement is riot, people 
 are let into society who have no other claim to 
 be there but money and impudence, and are as 
 ignorant as our maids and our grooms, and more 
 so. It is all as bad as it can be, and I suppose 
 it will only go on getting worse. You Italians 
 are the only people with whom manner is not a 
 lost art." 
 
 " You do us much honour. Perhaps we too 
 shall be infected before long. We are sending our 
 lads to public schools in your country : they will 
 probably come back unable to bow, ashamed of 
 natural grace, and ambitious to emulate the 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 135 
 
 groom model in everything. This is thought an 
 advanced education." 
 
 Lady Hilda laughed. 
 
 " The rich Egyptians go to English universi- 
 ties, and take back to the Nile a passion for rat- 
 hunting and brandy, and the most hideous hats 
 and coats in the universe ; and then think they 
 have improved on the age of the Pharaohs. 
 I hope Italy will never be infected, but I am 
 afraid ; you have gasworks, tramways, .snd mixed 
 marriages, and your populace has almost en- 
 tirely abandoned costume." 
 
 " And in the cities we have lost the instinct 
 of good taste in the most fatal manner. Per- 
 haps it has died out with the old costumes. Who 
 knows ? Dress is after all the thermometer of 
 taste. Modern male attire is of all others the 
 most frightful, the most grotesque, the most 
 gloomy, and, to our climate, the most unsuitable." 
 
 " Yes. Tall hats and tail coats appear to me 
 to be like the locusts, wherever they spread they 
 bear barrenness in their train. But the temper 
 of your people will always procure to you some 
 natural grate, some natural elegance." 
 
136 IN A. WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Let us hope so ; but in all public works our 
 taste already is gone. One may say, without 
 vanity, that hi full sense of beauty and of pro- 
 portion, Italy surpassed of old all the world : 
 how is it, I often ask myself, that we have lost 
 so much of this ? Here in Floralia, if we 
 require gas - works we erect their chimneys 
 on the very bank of our river, ruining one 
 of the loveliest views in the world, and one 
 that has been a tradition of beauty for ages. 
 If it be deemed necessary to break down and 
 widen our picturesque old bridges, we render 
 them hideous as any railway road, by hedging 
 them with frightful monotonous parapets of cast- 
 iron, the heaviest, most soulless, most hateful 
 thing that is manufactured. Do we make a fine 
 hill-drive, costing us enormously, when we have 
 no money to pay for it, we make one, indeed, as 
 fine as any in Europe ; and having made it, then 
 we ruin it by planting at every step cafes, and 
 guinguettes, and guard houses, and every artificial 
 abomination and vulgarity in stucco and brick- 
 work that can render its noble scenery ridiculous. 
 Do we deem it advisable, for sanitary or other 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 137 
 
 purposes, to turn the people out of the ancient 
 market where they keep their stalls under the 
 old palace walls happily enough, summer and 
 winter, like so many Dutch pictures, we build 
 a cage of iron and glass like an enormous cu- 
 cumber frame, inexpressibly hideous, and equally 
 incommodious, and only adapted to grill the 
 people in June and turn them to ice in January. 
 What is the reason? We have liberal givers 
 such as your countryman Sloane, such as my coun- 
 tryman Galliera, yet what single modern thing 
 worth producing can we show ? We have destroyed 
 much that will be as irreparable a loss to future 
 generations as the art destroyed in the great 
 siege is to us. But we have produced nothing 
 save deformity. Perhaps, indeed, we might not 
 have any second Michael Angelo to answer if we 
 called on him; but it is certain that we must 
 have architects capable of devising something in 
 carven stone to edge a bndge ; we must have 
 artists who, were they consulted, would say, ' do 
 not insult a sublime panorama of the most poetic 
 and celebrated valley in the world by putting into 
 the foreground a square guards' box, a stucco 
 
138 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 drinking-house, and the gilded lamps of a dancing- 
 garden.* We must have men capable of so much 
 as that yet they are either never employed 
 or never listened to ; the truth I fear is that a 
 public work now-a-days with us is like a plant 
 being carried to be planted in a city square, of 
 which every one who passes it plucks off a leaf : 
 by the time it reaches its destination the plant is 
 leafless. The public work is the plant, and the 
 money to be got from it is the foliage ; provided 
 each one plucks as much foliage as he can, no 
 one cares in what state the plant reaches the 
 piazza." 
 
 Lady Hilda looked at him as he spoke with 
 an eloquence and earnestness which absorbed 
 him for the moment, so that he forgot that he 
 was talking to a woman, and a woman whose 
 whole life was one of trifling, of languor, and of 
 extravagance. 
 
 " All that is very true," she said, with some 
 hesitation ; " but why then do you hold yourself 
 aloof why do you do nothing to change this 
 state of public things? You see the evil, but 
 you prescribe no remedy." 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 139 
 
 " The only remedy will be Time," he answered 
 her. " Corruption has eaten too deeply into the 
 heart of this nation to be easily eradicated. The 
 knife of war has not cut it out; we can only 
 hope for what the medicines of education and oi 
 open discussion may do ; the greatest danger lies 
 in the inertia of the people ; they are angry often, 
 but they do not move " 
 
 " Neither do you move, though you are angry." 
 
 He smiled a little sadly. 
 
 " If I were a rich man I would do so. Poor as 
 I am I could not embrace public life without seem- 
 ing to seek my own private ends from office. A 
 man without wealth has no influence, and his 
 motives will always be suspected at least here." 
 
 " But one should be above suspicion " 
 
 " Were one certain to do good yes." 
 
 " But why should you despair ? You have a 
 country of boundless resources, a people affec- 
 tionate, impressionable, infinitely engaging, and 
 much more intelligent naturally than any other 
 populace, a soil that scarce needs touching 
 to yield the richest abundance, and in nearly 
 every small town or obscure city some legacy 
 
140 IN A WINTER CITY- 
 
 of art or architecture, such as no other land can 
 
 show * 
 
 "Despair! God forbid that I should despair. 
 I think there is infinite hope, hut I cannot dis- 
 guise from myself that there are infinite dangers 
 also. An uneducated peasantry has had its reli- 
 gion torn away from it, and has no other moral 
 landmark set to cling to ; old ways and old 
 venerations are kicked aside and nothing substi- 
 tuted ; public business means almost universally 
 public pillage ; the new text placed before the 
 regenerated nation is, ' make money, honestly if 
 you can but make money ! ' haste, avarice, accu- 
 mulation, cunning, neglect of all loveliness, 
 desecration of all ancientness these, the modern 
 curses which accompany ' progress ' are set before 
 a scarcely awakened people as the proper objects 
 and idols of their efforts. We, who are chiefly 
 to be moved by our affections and our imagina- 
 tions, are only bidden to be henceforth inspired 
 by a joyless prosperity and a loveless materialism. 
 We, the heirs of the godhead of the Arts, are only 
 counselled to emulate the mechanical inventions 
 and the unscrupulous commerce of the American 
 
IN A WINTER CITT. 141 
 
 genius, and are ordered to learn to blush with 
 shame because our ancient cities, sacred with the 
 ashes of heroes, are not spurious brand-new lath 
 and plaster human ant-hills of the growth of yester- 
 day ! Forgive me, Madame," he said, inter- 
 rupting himself, with a little laugh, " I forget that 
 I am tedious to you. With the taxes at fifty- two 
 per cent., a poor landowner like myself may incline 
 to think that all is not as well as it should be." 
 
 " You interest me," said the Lady Hilda, and 
 her eyes dwelt on him with a grave, musing 
 regard that they had given to no man, " and on 
 your own lands, with your own people how is it 
 there ? * 
 
 His face brightened. 
 
 " My people love me," he said, softly. " As 
 for the lands when one is poor, one cannot 
 do much ; but every one is content on them- 
 that is something." 
 
 " Is it not everything ? " said the Lady Hilda, 
 with a little sigh ; for she herself, who could 
 gratify her every wish, had never yet quite known 
 what content could mean. " Let us go and look 
 at the ball-room ; Mila will be coming to know 
 
142 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 if we have heard of MacMahon's death, that we 
 talk so seriously." 
 
 She walked, on his arm, to the scene of tumult< 
 where heing hemmed in by lookers-on till the 
 pressure left them scarcely any space to perform 
 upon, the dancers were going through a quadrille 
 with exceeding vivacity, and with strong reminis- 
 cences in it of some steps of the cancan ; Madame 
 Mila and Lady Featherleigh particularly distin- 
 guishing themselves by their imitations of the 
 Chimpanzee dance, as performed ia the last 
 winter's operetta of Ching-aring-aring-ching. 
 
 They were of course being watched and ap- 
 plauded very loudly by the ring of spectators as 
 if they were really the actors in the Ching-aring- 
 aring-ching, which afforded them the liveliest 
 pleasure possible, great ladies being never so 
 happy now-a-days as when they are quite sure 
 that they might really be taken for comedians or 
 courtezans. 
 
 It was hard upon Madame Mila that just as 
 she had jumped so high that La Petite Boulotte 
 herself could scarcely have jumped higher, the 
 lookers-on turned their heads to see the Lady 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 143 
 
 Hilda in the doorway on the arm of her white 
 Mousquetaire. Lady Hilda was beyond all dispute 
 the most beautiful woman of the rooms, she 
 threw them all into the shade as a rose dia- 
 mond throws stars of strass ; and many of the 
 men were so dazzled by her appearance there, 
 that they actually lost the sight of Madame Mila's 
 rose-coloured stockings twinkling in the air. 
 
 " Paolo fait bonne fortune," they said to one 
 another, and began to make wagers that she 
 would marry him, or, on the othei hand, that she 
 was only playing with him : opinion varied, and 
 bets ran high. 
 
 Society bets on everything peace and love, 
 and honour and happiness, are only " staying " 
 horses or " non-stayers," on whose running the 
 money is piled. It is fortunate indeed and rare 
 when the betting is " honest," and if the drinking 
 waters of peace be not poisoned on purpose, or 
 the smooth turf of a favourite's career be not 
 sprinkled with glass, by those who have laid the 
 odds heavily against it. So that they land their 
 bets, what do they care whether or no the sub- 
 ject of their speculations be lamed for life and 
 
144 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 destined to drag out its weary days between the 
 cab-shafts till the end comes in the knacker's 
 yard ? 
 
 As for the Lady Hilda, she was so used to be 
 the observed of all observers wherever she went, 
 that she never heeded who looked at her, and 
 never troubled herself what anybody might say. 
 
 She walked about with Delia Rocca, talked 
 with him, and let him sit by her in little shel- 
 tered camellia-filled velvet-hung nooks, because it 
 pleased her, and because he looked like an old 
 Velasquez picture in that white Louis Treize 
 dress. Of what anybody might think she was 
 absolutely indifferent ; she was not mistress of 
 herself and of fifty thousand a year to care for 
 the tittle-tattle of a small winter city. 
 
 It was very pleasant to be mistress of herself 
 to do absolutely as she chose to have no earthly 
 creature to consult to go to bed in Paris and 
 wake up in St. Petersburg if the fancy took her 
 to buy big diamonds till she could outblaze 
 Lady Dudley- -to buy thoroughbred horses and 
 old pictures and costly porcelains and all sorts of 
 biblots, ancient and curious, that might please her 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 145 
 
 taste to obey every caprice of the moment and 
 to have no one to be responsible to for its indul- 
 gence to write a cheque for a large amount if 
 she saw any great distress that was painful to 
 look upon to adorn her various houses with all 
 that elegance of whim and culture of mind could 
 gather together from the treasures of centuries 
 to do just as she pleased, in a word, without any 
 one else to ask, or any necessity to ponder 
 whether the expense were wise. It was very agree- 
 able to be mistress of herself, and yet 
 
 There is a capitalist in Europe who is very un- 
 happy because all his wealth cannot purchase the 
 world-famous Key of the Strozzi Princes. 
 
 Lady Hilda was never unhappy, but she was 
 not quite content. 
 
 Out of the very abundance of her life she waa 
 weary, and there was a certain coldness in it all ; 
 it was too like one of her own diamonds. 
 
 She sighed a little to-night when her white 
 Mousquetaire had led her to her carriage, and 
 she was rolling across the bridge homeward, 
 whilst Madame Mila's gossamer skirts were still 
 twirling, and her rosy stockings still twinkling ia 
 
146 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 all the intricacies and diversions with which the 
 Vicomte Maurice would keep the cotillon going 
 until nine o'clock in the morning. 
 
 In the darkness of her carriage, as it went over 
 the stones through the winding ill-lit streets, she 
 saw soft amorous eyes looking at her under their 
 dreamy lids ; she could not forget their look ; 
 she was haunted hy it it had said so much. 
 
 The tale it had told was one she had heard in- 
 deed twenty times a year for ten long years, and it 
 had never moved her ; it had bored her nothing 
 more. 
 
 But now a sudden warmth, a strange emotion, 
 thrilled in her, driving through the dark with the 
 pressure of his hand still seeming to linger upon 
 hers. 
 
 It was such an old old tale that his eyes had 
 told, and yet for once it had touched her some- 
 how and made her heart quicken, her colour 
 rise. 
 
 " It is too ridiculous ! " she said to herself. "I 
 am dreaming. Fancy my caring ! " 
 
 And she was angry with herself, and when she 
 reached her own rooms looked a moment at her 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 147 
 
 full reflection in the long mirrors, diamonds and 
 all, before she rang for her maid to come to her. 
 
 It was a brilliant and beautiful figure that she 
 saw there in the gorgeous colours copied from a 
 picture by Watteau le Jeune, and with the 
 great stones shining above her head and on her 
 breast like so many little dazzling suns. 
 
 She had loved herself very dearly all her life, 
 lived for herself, and in a refined and lofty way 
 had been as absolutely self-engrossed and amorous 
 of her own pleasure and her own vanities as the 
 greediest and cruellest of ordinary egotists. 
 
 " Am I a fool ? " she said, angrily, to her own 
 image. "It is too absurd ! Why should he 
 move me more than anyone of all the others ? " 
 
 And yet suddenly all the life which had so well 
 satisfied her seemed empty seemed cold and 
 hard as one of her many diamonds. 
 
 She rang with haste and impatience for her 
 maid; and all they did, from the hot soup they 
 brought to the way they untwisted her hair, was 
 wrong ; and when she lay down in her bed she 
 could not sleep, and when the bright forenoon 
 came full of the sound of pealing bells and ga^ 
 
 L 2 
 
148 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 street songs and hurrying feet, she fell into 
 feverish dreams, and, waiting later, did Dot know 
 what ailed her. 
 
 From that time Delia Rocca ceased to avoid 
 the Hotel Murat ; he was received there oftener 
 than on her " day ;" he went ahout with her on 
 various pilgrimages to quaint old out-of-the-way 
 nooks of forgotten art which he could tell her of, 
 knowing every nook and corner of his native city ; 
 she almost always invited him when she had other 
 people to dine with her ; her cousin did the same, 
 and he was usually included in all those mani- 
 fold schemes for diversions which women like 
 Madame Mila are always setting on foot, thinking 
 with Diderot's vagabond that it is something at 
 any rate to have got rid of Time. 
 
 Sometimes he availed himself of these oppor- 
 tunities of Fortune, sometimes he did not. His 
 conduct had a variableness about it which did 
 more than anything else would have done to 
 arrest the attention of a woman sated with 
 homage as the Lady Hilda had been all her 
 days. She missed him when he was absent; 
 she was influenced by him when he was present. 
 
IN A WIN TEE CITY. 149 
 
 Beneath the softness of his manner there was 
 a certain seriousness which had its weight with 
 her. He made her feel ashamed of many 
 things. 
 
 Something in his way of life also attracted her. 
 There are a freedom and simplicity in all the 
 habits of an Italian noble that are in strong con- 
 trast with the formal conventionalism of the ways 
 of other men ; there is a feudal affectionateness of 
 relation between him and his dependants which 
 is not like anything else ; when he knows any- 
 thing of agriculture, and interests himself per- 
 sonally in his people, the result is an existence 
 which makes the life of the Paris flaneurs and the 
 London idlers look very poor indeed. 
 
 Palestrina often saw its lord drive thither by 
 six in the morning, walk over his fields, hear 
 grievances and redress them, mark out new vine- 
 walks with his bailiff, watch his white oxen turn 
 the sods of the steep slopes, and plan trench- 
 cuttings to arrest the winter-swollen brooks, long 
 before the men of his degree in Paris or in Lon- 
 don opened their heavy eyes to call for their 
 morning taste of brandy, and awoke to the recol- 
 
150 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 lection of their night's gaming losses, or their 
 wagers on coming races. 
 
 The finest of fine gentlemen, the grandest of 
 grand seigneurs, in court or drawing-room or diplo- 
 matic circle, Paolo della Rocca, amongst his own 
 grey olive orchards and the fragrance of his 
 great wooden storehouses, was as simple as Cin- 
 cinnatus, laughed like a hoy with his old steward, 
 caressed like a woman the hroad heads of his 
 beasts at the plough, and sat under a great 
 mulberry to break his bread at noonday, 
 hearkening to the talk of his peasants as though 
 he were one of them. 
 
 The old Etrurian gentleness and love of the 
 rural life are still alive in this land ; may they 
 never perish, for they are to the nation, as the 
 timely rains to the vine, as the sweet strong sun 
 to the harvest. 
 
 This simplicity, this naturalness, which in the 
 Italian will often underlie the highest polish of 
 culture and of ceremony, had a curious fascination 
 for a woman in whose own life there had been 
 no place for simplicity and no thought for nature. 
 
 She had been in the bonds of the world always, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 151 
 
 as a child in its swaddling bands ; none the less so 
 because she had been one of its leaders in those 
 matters of supreme fashion wherein she had 
 reigned as a goddess. Her life had been alto- 
 gether artificial; she had always been a great 
 garden lily in a hothouse, she had never known 
 what it was to be blown by a fresh breeze on a 
 sun-swept mocrland like a heather flower. The 
 hothouse shelters from all chills and is full of 
 perfume, but you can see no horizon from it ; 
 that alone is the joy of the moorland. Now and 
 then, garden lily in a stove-heated palace though 
 she was, some vague want, some dim unful- 
 filled wish, had stirred in her; she began to 
 think now that it had been for that unknown 
 horizon. 
 
 " Men live too much in herds, in crowded 
 rooms, amongst stoves and gas jets,'* he said to 
 her once. " There are only two atmospheres 
 that do one morally any good the open air and 
 the air of the cloister." 
 
 " You mean that there are only two things that 
 ire good activity and meditation ? " 
 
 " I think so. The fault of society is that it 
 
152 IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 substitutes for those, stimulants and stagna- 
 tion." 
 
 He made her think he influenced her more 
 than she knew. Under the caressing subserviency 
 to her as of a courtier, she felt the power of a 
 man who discerned life more clearly and more 
 wisely than herself. 
 
 The chief evil of society lies in the enormous 
 importance which it gives to trifles. She began 
 to feel that with all her splendour she had been 
 only occupied with trifles. Nature had been a 
 sealed book to her, and she began to doubt that 
 she had even understood Art. 
 
 " If you can be pleased with this," says a 
 great art-critic, 'this' being a little fres-o of 
 St. Anne, " you can see Floralia. But if not, 
 by all means amuse yourself there, if you find it 
 amusing, as long as you like; you can never 
 see it." 
 
 The test may be a little exaggerated, but the 
 general meaning of his words is correct. 
 
 Cosmopolitan and Anglo-American Floralia, 
 for the main part, do not see the city they coma 
 to winter in; see nothing of its glories, of its 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 153 
 
 sanctities, of its almost divinities ; see only their 
 own friends, their own faces, their own fans, 
 flirtations, and fallals, reflected as in mirrors all 
 around them, and filling up their horizon. 
 
 A Dutchman can be just as solemnly and 
 entirely contemplative of a lemon-pip and a cheese- 
 paring as an Italian of the Virgin in glory." 
 
 Cosmopolitan and Anglo-American Floralia is 
 in love with its lemon-pips, and has no eyes for 
 the Glory. When it has an eye, indeed, it is 
 almost worse, because it is bent then on buying 
 the Glory for its drawing-room staircase, or worse 
 yet, on selling it again at a profit. 
 
 The Lady Hilda, who did not love lemon-pips, 
 but who yet had never seen the Glory with that 
 simplicity, as of a child's worship, which alone 
 constitutes the true sight, began to unlearn many 
 of her theories, and to learn very much in 
 emotion and vision, as she carried her delicate 
 disdainful head into the little dusky chapels and 
 the quiet prayer-worn chauntries of Floralia. 
 
 Her love of Art had after all been a cold, she 
 began to think a poor, passion. She had studied 
 the philosophy of Art, had been learned in the 
 
154 IA r A WINTER CITY. 
 
 contemplative and the dramatic schools, had 
 known the signs manual of this epoch and the 
 other, had discoursed learnedly of Lombard and 
 Byzantine, of objective and subjective, of archaic 
 and naturalistic ; but all the while it had been 
 not very much more than a scholarly jargon, a 
 graceful pedantry, which had served to make 
 her doubly scornful of those more ignorant. Art 
 is a fashion in some circles, as religion is in 
 some, and license is in others ; and Art had been 
 scarcely deeper than a fashion with her, or cared 
 for more deeply than as a superior kind of 
 furniture. 
 
 But here, in this, the sweetest, noblest, most 
 hallowed city of the world, which has been so 
 full of genius in other times, that the fragrance 
 thereof remains, as it were, upon the very 
 stones, like that Persian attar, to make one 
 ounce of which a hundred thousand roses die, 
 here something much deeper yet much simpler 
 came upon her. 
 
 Her theories melted away into pure rever- 
 ence, her philosophies faded into tenderness 
 new revelations of human life came to her 
 
IN A WIN TEE CITY. 155 
 
 before those spiritual imaginings of men to 
 whom the blue sky had seemed full of angels, 
 and the watches of the night been stirred by the 
 voice of God : before those old panels and old 
 frescoes, often so simple, often so pathetic, always 
 so sincere in faith and in work, she grew herself 
 simpler and of more humility, and learned that 
 art is a religion for whose right understanding 
 one must needs become " even as a little 
 child." 
 
 She had been in great art cities before ; in 
 the home of Tintoretto and the Veronese, in the 
 asylum of the Madonna de San Sisto, in the 
 stone wilderness of Ludwig where the Faun sleeps 
 in exile, in mighty Rome itself; but she had not 
 felt as she felt now. She had been full of appre- 
 ciation of their art, but they had left her as they 
 had found her, cold, vain, self-engrossed, entirely 
 shut in a Holy of Holies of culture and of criti- 
 cism ; she had covered her Cavalcaselle with 
 pencil notes, and had glanced from a predella or 
 a pieta to the pages of her Ruskin with a serene 
 smile of doubt. 
 
 But here and now Art ceased to be science, 
 
156 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 and became emotion in her. Why was it ? she 
 did not care to ask herself. 
 
 Only all her old philosophies seemed falling 
 about her like shed leaves, and her old self 
 seemed to her but a purposeless frivolous chilly 
 creature. The real reason she would not face, and 
 indeed as yet was not conscious of; the reason 
 that love had entered into her, and that love, 
 if it be worth the name, has always two hand- 
 maidens : swift sympathy, and sad humility, 
 keeping step together. 
 
CHAPTER VH, 
 
 FOREIGN Floralia, i.e., that portion of Floralia 
 which is not indigenous to the soil, but has only 
 flown south with the swallows, is remarkable for 
 a really god-like consciousness it knows every- 
 thing about every body, and all things, past, pre- 
 sent, and to come, that ever did, could, would, 
 should, cannot, will not, or never shall happen; 
 and is aware of all things that have ever taken place, 
 and of a great many things that never have done 
 BO. It is much better informed about you than 
 you are yourself ; knows your morals better than 
 your confessor, your constitution better than your 
 doctor, your income better than your banker, and 
 the day you were born on, better than your mother. 
 
158 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 It is omniscient and omnipresent, microscopic 
 and telescopic ; it is a court-edition of Scotland 
 Yard, and a pocket-edition of the Cabinet Noir ; 
 it speeds as many interrogations as a telegraph- 
 wire, and has as many mysteries as the agony 
 column of a newspaper only it always answers 
 its own questions, and has all the keys to its own 
 mysteries, and what is still more comforting, 
 always knows everything for " certain." 
 
 It knows that you starve your servants because 
 you are poor and like to save on the butcher and 
 baker ; it knows that you overpay them because 
 you are rich and want them to keep your secrets , 
 it knows that your great grandmother's second 
 cousin was hanged for forgery at Tyburn ; it 
 knows that your silk stockings have cotton tops 
 to them ; it knows that your heirloom-guipure 
 is imitation, made the other day at Rapallo ; it 
 knows that your Embassy only receives you be- 
 cause hush a great personage ah, so very 
 shocking ; it knows that you had green peas six 
 weeks before anybody else; it knows that you have 
 had four dinner parties this week and are living on 
 your capital ; it knows that when you were *i 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 169 
 
 Rome you only went to the Quirinal Wednesdays, 
 because (whisper, whisper, whisper) oh, indeed 
 it is perfectly true had it on the hest authority 
 dreadful, incredible, but perfectly true ! 
 
 In point of fact there is nothing it doesn't 
 know. 
 
 Except, to be sure, it never knows that Mrs. 
 Potiphar is not virtuous, or that Lady Messalina 
 is not everything she should be ; this it never 
 knows and never admits, because if it did it could 
 not very well drink the Potiphar champagne, and 
 might lose for its daughters the Messalina balls. 
 Indeed its perpetual loquacity, which is "as the 
 waters come down at Lodore," has most solemn 
 and impressive interludes of refreshing dumbness 
 and deafness when any incautious speaker, not 
 trained to its ways, hints that Mrs. Potiphar 
 lives in a queer manner, or that Lady Messalina 
 would be out of society anywhere else; then in- 
 deed does Anglo-Saxon Floralia draw itself up 
 with an injured dignity, and rebuke you with the 
 murmur of Christian charity. 
 
 In other respects however it has the soul 
 of Samuel Pepys multiplied by five thousand. 
 
!60 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 It watched the progress of intimacy between 
 Lady Hilda and the ruined lord of Patestrina, 
 and knew "all about it," knew a vast deal 
 more than the persons concerned, of course; 
 it always does, or what would be the use of 
 talking? 
 
 Gossiping over its bonbons and tea in 
 the many pleasant houses in which the south 
 wintering northern swallows nestle, it knew 
 that he and she had been in love years and 
 years before ; the family would not let her marry 
 him because he was so poor ; it was the discovery 
 of his letters to her that had killed poor old rich 
 Vorarlberg ; he and her brother had fought in the 
 Bois indeed ! oh yes, it was hushed up at the 
 time, but it was quite true, and he had shot her 
 brother in the shoulder; the surgeon who had 
 attended the wounded man had told the physician 
 who had attended the sister-in-law of the cousin of 
 the most intimate friend of the lady who had 
 vouched for this. There could not be better autho- 
 rity. But there never was anything against her ? 
 oh dear me, no, never anything-r-everybody said 
 this very warmly, because everybody had been, 
 
IN A WINTER CdTY. 161 
 
 hoped to be, or at least would not despair of being, 
 introduced to her and asked to dinner. It was very 
 romantic, really most interesting ; they had not 
 met for nine years, and now ! ah, that explained 
 all her coldness then, and that extraordinary 
 rejection of the Crown Prince of Deutschland, 
 which nobody ever had been able to understand. 
 But was it not strange that he had never tried to 
 resume his old influence before ? No, he was as 
 proud as he was poor, and besides they had 
 quarrelled after the duel with her brother ; they 
 had parted one night very bitterly, after one of 
 the Empress's balls at St. Cloud, out on the 
 terrace there ; but he had always refused to give 
 up her portrait ; somebody had seen it upon his 
 chest when he had been stripped in the hospital 
 after Custozza; oh yes, they remembered that 
 perfectly. 
 
 Altogether they made such a very pretty story 
 that it was quite a pity that it was not true, and 
 that the subjects of it had never met until the 
 Due de St. Louis had brought them face to face 
 that winter. The one real truth which did begin 
 to embitter the life of the Lady Hilda and lie 
 
162 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 heavy on her thoughts, waking and sleeping, was 
 one that the garrulous gossiping Pepys-like 
 northern swallows, chirping so busily, did not 
 guess at all. Indeed, this is the sad fate which 
 generally befalls Gossip. 
 
 It is like the poor devil in the legend of 
 Fugger's Teuffelpalast at Trent ; it toils till cock- 
 crow picking up the widely-scattered grains of 
 corn by millions till the bushel measure is piled 
 high, and lo ! the five grains that are the grains 
 always escape its sight and roll away and hide 
 themselves. The poor devil, being a primitive 
 creature, shrieked and flew away in despair at his 
 failure. Gossip hugs its false measure and says 
 loftily that the five real grains are of no conse- 
 quence whatever. 
 
 The Due de St. Louis, who had not got the five 
 grains any more than they had, yet who could 
 have told them their bushelful was all wrong, 
 like a wise man, seeing the project of his affec- 
 tions in a fair way towards realization at least, 
 so he thought prudently abstained from saying 
 one word about it to any one. 
 
 " Trop de zele " spoiled everything, he knew, 
 
IN A WINTER CJTY. 1C3 
 
 from politics to omelettes, from the making of 
 proselytes to the frying of artichokes. A breath 
 too much has before now toppled down the most 
 carefully built house of cards. When to let 
 things alone is perhaps the subtlest, rarest, and 
 most useful of all knowledge. 
 
 A man here and there has it ; it may be said 
 that no woman has, has had, or ever will have it. 
 If Napoleon had had it he might have died at 
 eighty at St. Cloud instead of St. Helena. But 
 genius, like woman, never has been known to 
 have it. For genius and caution are as far apart 
 as the poles. 
 
 " Tout va bien," the Due said to himself, 
 taking off his hat to her when he saw DeUa 
 Bocca by her carriage ; meeting them in discus- 
 sion before some painting or statue that she was 
 about to buy; or watching them tMe-a-tete on 
 some couch of a ballroom, or in some nook of a 
 gas-lit grove of camellias. 
 
 " Tout va bien," said the Due, smiling to him- 
 self, and speeding on his way to his various mis- 
 sions, reconciling angry ladies, making the prettiest 
 flatteries to pretty ones, seeking some unobtaio- 
 
164 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 able enamel, ivory, or elzevir, penning sparkling 
 proverbs in Terse, arranging costume qua- 
 drilles, preventing duels, and smiling on debu- 
 tantes, adjusting old quarrels, and hearing new 
 tenors ; always in a whirl of engagements, always 
 courted and courteous, always the busiest, the 
 wittiest, the happiest, the most urbane, the most 
 charming, the most serene person in all Floralia. 
 " Tout va bien," said the Due, and the town 
 with him : the two persons concerned were 
 neither of them quite so sure. 
 
 Meanwhile, for a little space the name and fame 
 and ways and wonders of the Lady Hilda which 
 filled Floralia with a blaze as of electric lights, 
 quelling all lesser luminaries, was almost dis- 
 regarded in a colossal sentiment, a gigantic dis- 
 cussion, a debate which, for endless eloquence 
 and breathless conflict, would require the dithy- 
 rambs of Pindar meetly to record: the grave 
 question of who would, and who would not, go to 
 the Postirhe ball. 
 
 " Number One goes to dine with Number Two, 
 only that he may say he did so to Number Three," 
 some cynic has declared ; but Floralia improves 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 165 
 
 even on this ; before it goes to dine or dance, 
 it spends the whole week in trying to find 
 out who all the Number Fours will be, or in 
 declaring that if such and such a Number 
 Four goes it does not think it can go itself 
 out of principle all which diversions wile its 
 time away and serve to amuse it as a box of 
 toys a child. Not that it ever fails to go and 
 dine or dance, only it likes to discuss it 
 dubiously in this way. 
 
 The Postiche ball was really a thing to move 
 society to its depths. 
 
 The wintering- swallows had never been so 
 fluttered about anything since the mighty and 
 immortal question of the previous season, when 
 a Prince of the H. B. Empire, a United Nether- 
 lands Minister, and a Due et Pair of France, had 
 all been asked to dinner together with their 
 respective wives at an American house, and the 
 hostess and all the swallows with her had lived in 
 agonies for ten days previously, torn to pieces by 
 the terrible doubts of Precedence ; beseeching 
 and receiving countless counsels and councillors, 
 and nonsuiting authorities and quoting precedents 
 
16* IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 with the research of Max Mliller and the zeal of 
 Dr. Kenealy. 
 
 But the Postiche hall was a much wider, in- 
 deed almost an international matter ; because the 
 Anglo- Saxon races had staked their lives that it 
 should be a success ; and the Latin and Musco- 
 vite had declared that it would be a failure ; and 
 everybody was dying to go, and yet everybody 
 was ashamed to go, a state of mind which con- 
 stitutes the highest sort of social ecstacy in this 
 age of composite emotions. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Joshua K. Postiche, some said, 
 were Jews, and some said were Dutch, and some 
 said were half-castes from Cuba, and some said 
 were Americans from Arkansas, and some said had 
 been usurers, and some gin-spinners, and some 
 opium dealers, and some things even yet worse ; 
 at any rate they had amassed, somehow or other, 
 a great deal of money, and had therefore got into 
 society by dint of a very large expenditure and 
 the meekest endurance of insults; and had 
 made an ancient palace as gaudy and garish as 
 any brand-new hotel at Nice or Scarboro', and 
 gathered in it all the cosmopolitan crowd of 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 167 
 
 Floralia ; some of the Italian planets and Mus- 
 covite stars alone hanging aloof in a loftier 
 atmosphere, to the very great anguish of the 
 Joshua R. Postiches. 
 
 The ball was to be a wonderful ball, and the co- 
 tillon presents were whispered to have cost thirty 
 thousand francs, and there were various rumours 
 of a " surprise " there would be at it, as poor 
 Louis Napoleon used to promise the Parisians 
 one for the New Year. Louis Napoleon's pro- 
 mises always ended in smoke, but the surprise 
 of the Joshua E. Postiches was always to be 
 reckoned on as something excellent : salmon 
 come straight from the Scotch rivers ; lobsters 
 stewed in tokay du krone ; French comic actors 
 fetched from Paris ; some great singer, paid 
 heaven knew what for merely opening her 
 mouth; some dove flying about with jewels in 
 his beak for everybody, or something of that 
 sort, which showed that the Joshua E. Postiches, 
 wherever they had been " raised," or even if they 
 had kept a drinking-bar and eating-shop in 
 Havannah, as some people said, were at all events 
 persons who knew the requirements of their owa 
 
168 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 generation and the way to mount into " La 
 Haute." 
 
 Why they wanted to get there no mortal could 
 tell ; they had no children, and were hoth middle- 
 aged ; hut no doubt, if you have not been used to 
 them, the cards of countesses are as balm in 
 Gilead, and to see a fashionable throng come up 
 your staircase is to have attained the height of 
 human desire. 
 
 At any rate, the Joshua K. Postiches had set 
 their souls on this sort of social success, and 
 they achieved it ; receiving at their parties many 
 distinguished and infinitely bored personages who 
 had nothing to do in FJoralia, and would have 
 cut them in Paris, Vienna, or London, with the 
 blandest and blankest stare of unconsciousness. 
 
 Madame Mila was on the point of adding her- 
 self to those personages. 
 
 " I must go to the ball," she said. " Oh, it will 
 be the best thing of the season except Nina 
 Trasimene's I must go to the ball but then I 
 can't endure to know the woman." 
 
 "Can't you go without knowing her?" said 
 the Ladv Hilda. " That has been done 
 
A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Madame Mila did not feel the satire. 
 
 "Yes; one could do it in Paris or London 
 but not in a little place like this," she answered, 
 innocently. " I must let them present her to 
 me and I must leave a card. That is what's so 
 horrid. The woman is dreadful; she murders 
 all the languages, and the man's always looking 
 about for a spittoon, and calls you my lady. 
 They are too dreadful! But I must go to 
 the hall. Besides, our own people want 
 Maurice to lead the cotillon. Now Guido 
 Salvareo is ill, there's nobody that can come 
 near Maurice " 
 
 " But 1 suppose he would not dare to go if you 
 were not there?" 
 
 " Of course he would not go ; the idea ! But 
 I mean to go I must go. I'm only thinking 
 how I can get out of knowing the woman after- 
 wards. It's so difficult in a small place, and I am 
 always so good-natured in those things. I sup- 
 pose it's no use asking you to come, Hilda ? else, 
 if you would, you could cut them afterwards most 
 deliciously, and I should do as you did. Left to 
 myself, I'm always too ^ood-natured." 
 
170 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " I would do most things to please you, my 
 dear Mila," answered her cousin, " hut I don't 
 think I can do that. You know it's my rule 
 never to visit people that I won't let visit me 
 and I don't like murdered languages, and being 
 called 'my lady. 1 - 
 
 " Oh, the people are horrid I say so," an- 
 swered the Comtesse. " I shall have nothing to 
 do with them, of course after their ball." 
 
 " But surely, it's very low, Mila, that sort of 
 thing. I know people do it nowadays. But 
 really, to be a guest of a person you intend to cut 
 next day " 
 
 " What does it matter ? She wants my name 
 on her list ; she gets it ; I'm not bound to 
 give her anything more. There is nothing unfair 
 about it. She has what she wants, and more 
 than she could expect. Of course, all that kind of 
 persons must know perfectly well that we only go 
 to them as we go to the opera, and have no more 
 to do with them than we have with the opera 
 door-keepers. Of course they know we don't 
 visit them as we visit our own people. But if 
 snobbish creatures like those find pleasure in en- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 171 
 
 tertaining us, though they know quite well what 
 we think of them, and how we esteem them, and 
 why we go to them well, I don't see that they 
 deserve anything better." 
 
 " Nor I," said the Lady Hilda. " Only I 
 shouldn't go to them that's all. And it is very 
 funny, my love, that you, who have lived in all 
 the great courts of Europe, and have had your own 
 Embassy in London, should care one straw for a 
 hall at the Joshua R. Postiche's. Good gracious ! 
 You must have seen about seventy thousand balls 
 in your time ! " 
 
 "I am only six years older than you, Hilda," 
 said she, tartly. " I suppose you've been telling 
 Delia Rocca not to go to the Postiche's Olga 
 and the Baroness and Madame Valkyria, and 
 scores of them have been trying to persuade him 
 all the week, because if he stay away so many of 
 the other men will ; and none of us can stir him 
 an inch about it. ' On peut etre de tres-braves 
 gens mais je n'y vais pas,' that is all he says; 
 as if their being ' braves gens ' or not had any- 
 thing to do with it ; and yet I saw him the other 
 day with his hand on a contadino's shoulder in 
 
172 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 the market-place, and he was calling him ' caris- 
 simo mio.'" 
 
 " One of his own peasants, most likely," said 
 the Lady Hilda, coldly. " I have never heard 
 these Postiches even mentioned by M. Delia 
 Rocca, and I certainly have nothing whatever to 
 do with where he goes or doesn't go.*' 
 
 " He is always with you, at any rate," said Ma- 
 dame Mila ; " and if you would make him go, it 
 would only he kind of you. You see we want 
 everybody we know, so that we may he sure to make 
 the square dances only of our own people, and 
 not to see anything of anybody the Postiches may 
 have asked themselves. Little Dickie Dorrian, 
 who's managing it all, said to the woman Pos- 
 tiche, ' I'll bring the English division if you'll 
 spend enough on the cotillon toys; but I won't 
 undertake the Italians/ Now if Delia Rocca H 
 
 " Would you want a new dress, Mila ? " said 
 the Lady Hilda ; " I am sure you must if you're 
 going to a woman you can't know the next 
 day." 
 
 " I should like one, of course," said the Com- 
 tesse, " but I've had thirty new ernes this season 
 
IN A WINTER CITT. 1T3 
 
 already and what I owe Worth ! not to talk 
 of the Maison Roger " 
 
 " Let me give you one," said the Lady Hilda. 
 " Worth will do anything at short notice for either 
 of us ; and I must think this poor Postiche woman 
 ought to see you in a new dress, as she's never to 
 see you again." 
 
 " You are a darling, Hilda ! " said Madame 
 Mila, with ardent effusion, rising to kiss her 
 cousin. 
 
 Lady Hilda turned to let the caress fall on the 
 old guipure lace fichu round her throat, and 
 drew her writing-things to her to pen a telegram 
 to M. Worth. 
 
 " I suppose you don't care to say what colour ? " 
 she asked as she wrote. 
 
 " Oh no," answered the Comtesse. " He 
 remembers all the combinations I've had much 
 better than I do. You dictate to him a little too 
 much ; I've heard him say so " 
 
 " He never said so to me," said the Lady 
 Hilda, with a laugh. " Of course I dictate to 
 him. Whatever taste your dress-maker, man or 
 woman, may have and he has genius there are 
 
174 IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 little touches which should always come from 
 oneself, and which can alone give originality. 
 That is why all that herd of women, who really do 
 go to Worth but yet are nobodies, look hardly the 
 better for him ; he thinks about us, and we think 
 about ourselves ; but he doesn't think about 
 them, and as they have no thought themselves 
 the result is that they all look as conventional 
 and similar as if they were dolls dressed for a 
 bazaar. Women ought to be educated to more 
 sense of colour and form. Even an ugly woman 
 ought to be taught that it is her duty to make her 
 ugliness as little disagreeable as possible. If the 
 eyes and the taste of women were cultivated by 
 artistic study, an ill-dressed woman would be- 
 come an impossibility. If I were ever so poor," 
 continued the Lady Hilda impressively, " if I 
 were ever so poor, and had to sew my own gowns, 
 and make them of serge or of dimity, I would cut 
 them so that Giorgione or Gainsborough, if they 
 were living, would be able to look at me with 
 complaisancy or at all events without a shudder. 
 It is not half so much a question of material as it 
 is of taste. But nowadays the people who cannot 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 175 
 
 afford material have no taste ; so that after us, 
 and the women whom Worth manages to make 
 look decently in spite of themselves, there is 
 nothing but a multitude of hideously- attired 
 persons, who make the very streets appalling 
 either by dreariness or gaudiness: they never 
 have any medium. Now a peasant girl of the 
 Marche, or of the Agro Romana, or of the Pays de 
 Vaud, is charming, because her garments have 
 beauty of hue in them, and that other beauty 
 
 which comes from perfect suitability and Ah ! 
 
 come sta Duca ? " 
 
 She interrupted herself, and turned to Delia 
 Rocca, who was standing behind her, the servant's 
 announcement of him having been unheard : it was 
 her day to receive. 
 
 " Oh, that the rest of your sex, Madame," he 
 said, after his salutations were made, " could sit 
 at your feet and take in those words of wisdom ! 
 Yes, I heard most that you said ; I can understand 
 your tongue a little ; you are so right ; it is the 
 duty of every woman to make herself as full of 
 grace as she can ; all cannot be lovely, but none 
 need be unlovely." 
 
176 TN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Exactly; women are reproached with thinking 
 too much ahout dress, but the real truth is, they 
 do not think enough about it in the right way. 
 They talk about it dreadfully, in the vulgarest 
 fashion, but bring any thought to it they don't. 
 Most women will wear anything if it be only de 
 rigueur. I believe if I, and Princess Metternich, 
 and Madame de Gallifet, and Madame Aguado, 
 and a few like us wore that pea-green silk coat 
 and waistcoat which the Advanced Thought 
 Ladies of America are advocating as the best 
 new kind of dress for women, that you would 
 Bee ten thousand pea-green coats and waistcoats 
 blazing in the streets the week afterwards " 
 
 " Not a bad idea for the Cotton Costume ball/' 
 said Madame Mila. " I will have a pea-green 
 coat and waisteoat, a tall hat, and hessians ; and 
 call myself ' Advanced Thought.' " 
 
 "To be completely in character, Mila, you 
 must have blue spectacles, a penny whistle, a 
 phial full of nostrums, a magpie for your emblem, 
 and a calico banner, inscribed 'Everything is 
 Nothing!' " 
 
 " Charming ! It shall be thp best thing there. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 177 
 
 Draw it for me, Delia Rocca, and I will send the 
 sketch to Paris, so that it can all come in a box 
 together, magpie and all." 
 
 He drew a sheet of paper to him, and sketched 
 the figure in ink, with spirit. 
 
 " You have all the talents so many thanks," 
 said Madame Mila, looking over his shoulder. 
 
 Delia Eocca sighed. 
 
 " If I have them I have huried them, Madame 
 but, indeed, I can make no such claim." 
 
 " So many thanks," echoed the Comtesse. 
 " Pray, don't say a word about it, or we shall 
 have a dozen ' Advanced Thoughts ' in calico. 
 Hilda, I am just going to Nina's to see about the 
 Muscadins. I have resolved we shall play that 
 piece or no other. I shall be back in ten 
 minutes, ask Olga to wait ; " and Madame Mila 
 wafted herself out of the room, and downstairs to 
 the courtyard, where the coupe and the exemplary 
 Maurice were waiting. 
 
 "How she does amuse herself!" said Lady 
 Hilda, a little enviously. " I wish I could do it. 
 What can it matter whether they play the Mus* 
 cadins or anything else ! " 
 
 x 
 
178 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 "Plus on est fou, plus on rit," said Delia 
 Rocca, sketching arabesques with his pen. " Nay, 
 that is too impolite in me to charming Madame 
 Mila. But, like all old proverbs, it is more true 
 than elegant." 
 
 " Do you know, Madame," he continued, with 
 a little hesitation, " I have often ventured to think 
 that, despite your brilliancy, and your position, 
 and all your enviable fate, you are not alto- 
 gether quite happy ? Am I right ? Or have I 
 committed too great an impertinence to be 
 answered?" 
 
 "No impertinence whatever," said the Lady 
 Hilda, a little wearily. " You may be right ; I 
 don't know ; I am not unhappy certainly ; I have 
 nothing to be unhappy about ; but most things 
 seem very stupid to me. I confess Mila's endless 
 diversions and excitements are quite beyond me. 
 There is such a terrible sameness in everything." 
 
 " Because you have no deeper interests," he 
 answered her. He still sat near her at her 
 writing-table beside the fire, and was playing with 
 the little jewelled boy who held her pen-wiper. 
 
 She did not answer him ; and he continued 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 179 
 
 "I think you have said yourself, Madame, 
 the cause why everything seems more or less 
 wearisome to you you have ' nothing to be 
 unhappy about'; that is you have no one for 
 whom you care." 
 
 He thought that her proud delicate face 
 coloured a little; or it might be the warmth 
 from the fire of oak-logs and pine-cones. 
 
 "No; I don't care about people," she an- 
 swered him indifferently. " When you have seen 
 a person a few times it is enough. It is like 
 a book you have read through ; the interest is 
 gone ; you know the mot d'enigme." 
 
 " You speak of society; I spoke of affec- 
 tions." 
 
 The Lady Hilda laughed a little. 
 
 " I can't follow you. I do not feel them. I 
 like Clairvaux, my brother, certainly, but we 
 go years without seeing each other quite con- 
 tentedly." 
 
 " I spoke of affections, other affections," re- 
 plied Delia Rocca, with a little impatience. 
 " There is nothing else that gives warmth or 
 tolour to life. Without them there is no glow 
 
 N 2 
 
180 IJV A WINTER CITY. 
 
 in its pictures, they are all painted en grisaille. 
 Pleasure alone cannot content any one whose 
 character has any force, or mind any high intel- 
 ligence. Society is, as you say, a book we soon 
 read through, and know by heart till it loses all 
 interest. Art alone cannot fill more than a cer- 
 tain part of our emotions ; and culture, how- 
 ever perfect, leaves us unsatisfied. There is 
 only one thing that can give to life what your 
 poet called the light that never was on sea or 
 land and that is human love." 
 
 His eyes rested on her ; and for once in her 
 life her own eyes fell ; a troubled softness came 
 for a moment on her face, dispersing all its 
 languor and its coldness. In another moment 
 she recovered herself, and smiled a little. 
 
 "Ah! you are appassionato, as becomes your 
 country." 
 
 Delia Rocca looked at her with something 
 of disappointment and something of distaste ; 
 he rose and approached the grand piano. 
 
 " You allow me ? " he said, and touched a 
 few of the chords. He sang very low, and almost 
 as it were to himself, a canzone of the people 
 
IN A WINTER C1TT. 181 
 
 Si tu mi lasci, lasciar non ti voglio, 
 Se m' abbandoni, ti vo seguitare 
 Se passi il mare, il mar passare io voglio, 
 Se giri il mondo, il moudo vo' girare, " 4c. 
 
 The words were very simple, but the melody 
 was passionate and beautiful ; his voice, so low 
 at first, rose louder, with all the yearning tender- 
 ness in it with which the song is laden ; and 
 the soft sounds echoed through the silent 
 room, as they had echoed ten thousand times 
 in moonlit nights of midsummer, over the 
 land where Borneo and Stradella and Ariosto 
 loved. 
 
 His voice sank softly into silence ; and Lady 
 Hilda did not move. 
 
 There was a mist that was almost like tears 
 in her proud eyes ; she gazed into the fire, with 
 her cheek leaning on her hand; she did not 
 speak to him; there was no sound but the 
 falling of some burning wood upon the hearth. 
 
 " The simplest contadina in the land would 
 understand that," he said as he rose ; " and you, 
 great lady though you are, cannot ? Madame, 
 there are things, after all, that you have 
 missed.'* 
 
!2 IN A WIN TEE CITY. 
 
 " Go back and sing again," she said to him, 
 taking no notice of his words ; " I did not know 
 you ever sang " 
 
 " Every Italian does ; or well or ill," he an- 
 swered her. " We are born with music in us, 
 like the birds." 
 
 " But in society who hears you ? " 
 
 " No one. An atmosphere of gas, candles, 
 ennui, perfume, heat, and inane flatteries ! ah no, 
 Madame music is meant for silence, moon- 
 light, vinepaths, summer nights " 
 
 " This is winter and firelight, a few arm- 
 chairs and a great deal of street noise ; all the 
 same, go back and sing me more." 
 
 She spoke indifferently and lightly, leaning 
 her hand back on her chair, and hiding a little 
 yawn with her hand ; she would not have him 
 see that he had touched her to any foolish, 
 momentary weakness. But he had seen. He 
 smiled a little. 
 
 " As you command," he answered, and he 
 went back and made her music as she wished ; 
 short love lyrics of the populace, sonnets set 
 to noble airs, wild mournful boat-songs, and 
 
IN A WINTER CIT7. 183 
 
 snatches of soft melodies, such as echo all the 
 harvest-time through the firefly -lighted corn : 
 things all familiar to him from his infancy, but 
 to her unknown, and full of the force and 
 the yearning of the passion which was un- 
 known to her also, and in a certain way derided 
 by her. 
 
 He broke off abruptly, and came and leaned 
 on the chimney-piece near her, with his arm 
 amongst the little pug-dogs in Saxe, and figures 
 and fountains in Capo di Monte, which she 
 had collected in a few weeks from the bric-a-brac 
 people. He did not speak ; he only looked at 
 her where she sat, with the firelight and the 
 dying daylight on the silver fox-furs fringing 
 her dress, on the repousse gold and silver work 
 of her loose girdle, on the ends of the old 
 Spanish lace about her throat; on the great 
 rings that sparkled on her white fingers, which 
 were lying so idly clasped together on her 
 lap. 
 
 " You sing very beautifully," she said, calmly, 
 at length, with her eyes half closed and her 
 head lying back on the chair-cushions. " It 
 
184 72V A WINTER CITY. 
 
 is very strange you should be so mute in 
 society." 
 
 " I never sang to a crowd in my life, and 
 never would. Music is an impulse, or it is 
 nothing. I could never sing save to some 
 woman who " 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 " Who was music in herself," he added witn 
 a smile; it was not what had been upon his 
 lips. 
 
 " Then you should not have sung to me," she 
 said, still with half- closed eyes and a careless 
 coldness in her voice. " I am all discord ; have 
 you not found that out ? every woman is, now- 
 a-days ; we have lost the secret of harmony ; 
 we are always wanting to be excited, and never 
 succeeding in being anything but bored." 
 
 " These are mere words, Madame," he an- 
 swered her, "I hope they are not true. By 
 discord I think you only mean inconsistency. 
 Pardon me but I think you are all so wearied 
 because of the monotony of your lives. I dare 
 say that sounds very strangely to you, because 
 you pursue all the pleasures and all the ex- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 185 
 
 travagances that are obtainable. But then all 
 these are no novelties, they are merely habits. 
 Habit is nothing better than a harness ; even 
 when it is one silvered and belled. You have 
 exhausted everything too early ; how can it 
 have flavour ? You pursue an unvarying routine 
 of amusement : how can it amuse ? The life of 
 the great world is, after all, when we once know 
 it well, as tiresome as the life of the peasant 
 perhaps more so. I know both." 
 
 "All that may be right enough," said the 
 Lady Hilda, " but there is no help for it that 
 I see. If the world is not amusing, that is not 
 our fault. In the Beau Siecle, perhaps, or in 
 Augustan Borne " 
 
 "Be very sure it was the same thing. An 
 artificial life must grow tiresome to any one with 
 a mind above that of a parrot or a monkey. If 
 we can be content with it, we deserve nothing 
 better. What you call your discord is nothing 
 but your dissatisfaction the highest part of 
 you. If it were not treason to say so, treason 
 against this exquisite apparel, I would say that 
 you would be more likely to know happiness 
 
183 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 were you condemned to the serge and the dimity 
 you spoke of to Madame Mila an hour ago." 
 
 He had sunk on a stool at her feet as he spoke, 
 and caressed the silver fox and the gold girdle 
 lightly; his hand touched hers in passing, and 
 her face grew warm. She put a feather screen 
 between her and the fire. 
 
 " That is the old argument of content in the 
 cottage &c.," she said, with a slight laugh. "I 
 do not believe in it in the least. If it be ' best 
 repenting in a coach and six ' it must be best to be 
 bored in an arm-chair " 
 
 " Perhaps ! It is not I, certainly, who should 
 praise poverty ! " he said, with some bitterness, 
 and more sadness ; " and, indeed, poverty or 
 riches has little to do with the questiom of 
 happiness ; happiness can come but from one 
 thing ." 
 
 " A good conscience ? How terribly moral you 
 are." 
 
 " No : from our emotions, from our passions, 
 from our sympathies ; in fine, from Love." 
 
 His hand still played with the gold gypsire of 
 the girdle as he sat at her feet ; his eyes were 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 187 
 
 lifted to her face ; his voice was very low ; in all 
 his attitude and action and regard there were an 
 unuttered solicitation, an eloquence of unspoken 
 meaning ; she was silent : then the door opened ; 
 he dropped the girdle, and rose to his feet ; there 
 came a patter of high heels, and a chime of swift 
 aristocratic voices ; and into the room there 
 entered the Princess Olga, attended hy her con- 
 stant shadow, Don Carlo Maremma, with Lady 
 Featherleigh behind her, accompanied by her 
 attendant, Prince Nicolas Doggondorf. 
 
 " Ma chere, there is a regular riot going on at 
 Nina's," said the Princess Olga, advancing with 
 both hands outstretched. "All about those 
 Muscadins. Mila has seceded in full form, and, 
 of course, M. des Gommeux with her. Blanche 
 will only play if they have 'JZ faut qu'une 
 porte^ &c., which is as old as the hills, and Mila 
 won't play at all if Blanche be allowed to play 
 anything. They have quarrelled for life, so 
 have Mila and Nina. They are slanging each 
 other like two street boys. Alberto Rimini 
 is on his knees between them, and the Due 
 is declaring for the five thousandth time that it is 
 
188 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 the last he will ever have to do with theatricals. 
 I left while I could escape with life. What a 
 pity it is that playing for charity always developer 
 such fierce hostilities. Well, Paolo, have you 
 thought better of the Postiche ball ? No ? How 
 stiff-necked you are ! I do believe Carlo will be 
 the only Italian there ! " 
 
 " It will be a distinction to inscribe on his 
 tombstone, Madame," said Delia Rocca. "But 
 then he goes under command ." 
 
 " And under protest," murmured Don Carlo. 
 
 "Which does not count. When one is no 
 longer a free agent <" 
 
 Princess Olga hit him a little blow with he* 
 muff. 
 
 " But why should you not go to the Postiches ? 
 Just as you go to the Veglione ; it is nothing 
 more." 
 
 " Madame, I am very old-fashioned in my 
 ideas, I dare say, but I confess I think that no 
 one should accept as a host a person he would 
 never accept as his guest. I may be wrong ' 
 
 " Of course you are wrong. That is not the 
 question at all," said Princess Olga, who did 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 189 
 
 not like people to differ with her. "Joshua R. 
 Postiche will never dream of being asked to 
 shoot your wild ducks or your partridges. All he 
 wants is that you should just be seen going up 
 his staircase, and drinking his champagne. 
 Society is full of Postiches : low people, with a 
 craze for entertaining high people. They don't 
 care how we insult them, nor how we laugh at 
 them, provided our cards lie in the bowl in their 
 hall. We take them at their own valuation, and 
 treat them as we treat the waiters at Spilhnan's 
 or Doney's ; we have paid the bill with our cards/' 
 
 " That is to say, we have paid with our names 
 which should represent all the honour, dignity, 
 and self-respect that we have inherited, and are 
 bound to maintain, for our own sakes and for 
 those who may come after us." 
 
 " Oh, mon Dieu, quel grand se"rieux ! M cried 
 the Princess, impatiently. " But, of course, if 
 you've been sitting with Hilda you have got more 
 stiff-necked than ever. What do you say, 
 Hilda? Isn't it ill-natured of him? He need 
 only walk in, bow once to the woman, and look 
 on at the edge of the ball-room for twenty 
 
190 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 minutes. The other men will go if he will do 
 as much as that." 
 
 " I think M. della Rocca quite right not ' to do 
 as much as that,' " said the Lady Hilda. " Why 
 Society ever does as much as that, or half as 
 much, or anything at all, for Joshua B. Postiche, 
 I can never tell. As it does, to be consistent 
 everybody should dine with the fruit woman from 
 the street corner, and play ecarte with their own 
 chimney sweeps." 
 
 " Oh, we shall come to that, Madame," said 
 Nicolas Doggondorf. "At least, if chimney 
 sweeping ever make heaps of money; I don't 
 think it does ; it only chokes little boys ." 
 
 " Ce bon Monsieur Postiche sold rum and 
 molasses," murmured Don Carlo. 
 
 "What's it to us what he sold?" said Lady 
 Featherleigh. " We've nothing to do with him ; 
 we're only going to his ball. You talk as if we 
 asked the man to dinner." 
 
 " What does the Archduchess Anna always say : 
 ' Ou je m'amuse j'y vais.' So we do all. I hear 
 he has been put up for the Club ; is it true ? " 
 added the Princess to Carlo Maremma. 
 
JJV A WINTER CITY. 191 
 
 "Yes, Krunensberg has put him up," he 
 answered her, "but he shall never get into it, 
 while there are any of us alive." 
 
 " Et s'il n'y a qu'un, moi je serai celuMa," 
 quoted Delia Rocca. 
 
 " But he has lent Krunensberg heaven knows 
 what- -some say two million francs," said Lady 
 Featheiieigh. 
 
 Prince Krunensberg was a great personage, 
 and, for a foreigner, of great influence in the 
 Club. 
 
 " Chere dame," said Delia Rocca, " if we elect 
 all Krunensberg's creditors we shall have to cover 
 three streets with our club-house ! " 
 
 " Oh my dear! I am half dead ! " cried Madame 
 Mila, flashing into the room, gorgeous in the 
 feathers of the golden pheasant, arranged on the 
 most exquisite combination of violet satin, and 
 bronze velvet, and throwing her muff on one side 
 of her and her parasol on the other, while Maurice 
 des Gommeux, who was the most admirable of 
 upper servants, stooped for them and smoothed 
 their ruffled elegance. " I am half dead ! Such a 
 scene I never went through in my life. I, who 
 
192 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 hate scenes, and never have any hardly even with 
 Spiridion ! Oh, has Olga told you ? Yes ; it is 
 horrible, infamous, intolerable ! after all I have 
 done for that odious Dumb Asylum and my 
 costumes ordered for the Muscadins, and half 
 the part learnt ! It is all Krunensberg's doing 
 and the Due didn't stand out one half as he 
 should have done ; and Blanche ! the idea 
 the little wretch is made of wood, and can't 
 even open her mouth ! As for Krunens- 
 berg, he deserves to be shot ! It is all his in- 
 fluence that has set Nina against the Muscadins 
 just to spite me ! What I have gone through 
 about this wretched theatre and then to have 
 that little chit of a Blanche set over my head, a 
 little creature, only married out of her convent 
 last year ; it is unbearable ; of course, neither I 
 nor des Gommeux shall play. Oh, here comes 
 the Due ; no, Due, it is not the slightest use ! If 
 you have that ridiculous musty old piece of 
 De Musset's, or if you have Blanche in it at all 
 you don't have Me in anything. A nice morn- 
 ing's work you have made of it 1 Nina and I 
 shall never speak 
 
IN A WINTER CITY 193 
 
 The Due laid his hat aside ; his delicate fea- 
 tures were puckered, weary, and troubled. 
 
 " Mais, Madame, pardon ! mais vous avez 
 toutes dit les choses les plus affreuses ! " 
 
 " Women always do, Due, when they are in a 
 passion," said Lady Hilda. " There is nothing 
 like a scene for discovering our real opinions of 
 one another. Why ! you look actually worried ! 
 I thought nothing ever ruffled you by any chance 
 whatever." 
 
 " Madame," said M. de St. Louis, stretching 
 himself, with a sigh, in a low chair beside her and 
 the fire, " I have always sedulously cultivated 
 serenity. I believe serenity to be the whole 
 secret of human health, happiness, longevity, good 
 taste, sound judgment, everything in point of fact 
 that is desirable in the life of a human being. 
 But, alas ! we are all mortal, and our best plans 
 are but finite. In an evil moment, when Pan- 
 dora's box was packed, there was put in with it 
 by the malice of Mercury a detonating powder, 
 called Amateur Rivalry. When all the other 
 discords were dispersed, this shot itself into the 
 loveliest forms and the gentlest bosoms: and 
 
194 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 where it explodes the wisest man stands help- 
 less. He cannot reconcile the warring elements 
 nor retain any personal peace himself. I am the 
 slave of Madame Mila ; I adore the dust of the 
 exquisite shoes of Madame Nina ; I am penetrated 
 with the most ahsolute devotion to Madame 
 Blanche ; when these heavenly graces are ready 
 to rend each other's hair, what can I do ? What 
 can I he except the most unhappy person upon 
 earth ? To reconcile ladies who are infuriated is 
 a hopeless dream ; it were easier to make whole 
 again a hroken glass of Venice. It makes one 
 almost wish," added the Due with a second sigh, 
 " almost wish that Moliere had never been 
 created, or, being created, had never written. But 
 for Moliere I doubt very much if the Drama, as an 
 &rt, would have lingered on to the present 
 time." 
 
 " Console yourself, my dear Due," said Lady 
 Hilda, " console yourself with a line from 
 Moliere : ' Cinq ou six coups de baton entre 
 gens qui s'aiment ne font que ragaillardir ramitie.* 
 Mila, Nina, and Blanche will kiss each other 
 to-morrow ; they must, or what becomes of the 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 196 
 
 great Contes de Mere d'Oie Quadrille to open 
 the Koubleskoff ball next week ? " 
 
 " I shall never speak to either of them as long 
 as I live," said Madame Mila, still ruffling all her 
 golden feathers in highest wrath. " As for the 
 quadrille the Koubleskoff must do as they can. 
 I do think Krunensberg has made Nina perfectly 
 odious ; I never saw anybody so altered by a 
 man in my life. Well, there's one thing, it won't 
 last. His * affairs ' never do.'* 
 
 " It will last as long as her jewels do," said 
 Carlo Maremma. 
 
 " Oh, no, he can't be quite so bad as that." 
 
 " Foi d'honneur ! since he left the Sant' AJQ- 
 gelmo you have never seen her family diamonds 
 except in the Paris paste replica, which she tells 
 you she wears for safety, and because it is such a 
 bore to have to employ policemen in plain clothes 
 at the balls " 
 
 " Talk of policemen ! " said Madame Mila, 
 " they say we're to have a caution sent us from 
 the Prefecture about our playing baccarat the 
 other night at the cafe they say no gambling is 
 allowed in the city the idea ! " 
 
 o a 
 
196 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " While the State organises the lotteries ! 
 Low very consistent," said the Lady Hilda. 
 
 " All your gaming is against the law, angels 
 of my soul," said Carlo Maremma. 
 
 " Then we'll all leave Floralia," said Madame 
 Mila. " The idea of not being able to do what 
 one chooses in one's own rooms ! there is one 
 thing, we can always go up to Roubleskoff's ; 
 they will never dare to caution him. But what 
 is the use of all this fuss ? everybody plays 
 everybody always will play." 
 
 " The Prefect is much too wise a man ever to 
 imagine he can prevent ladies doing what they 
 like," said Maremma. "It is those tremendous 
 losses of young De Fabris the other night that 
 have made a stir, and the Prefect thinks it ne- 
 cessary to say something; he is afraid of a 
 scandal." 
 
 " Good gracious ! As if anything filled a city 
 half so well as a scandal! Why don't Floralia 
 have a good gaming place like Monte Carlo? 
 we shouldn't want to use our own rooms 
 then " 
 
 " I confess," said the Due, in his gentle, medi- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 197 
 
 tative voice, " I confess that, like Miladi here, I 
 fail to altogether appreciate the moral horror of 
 a game at baccarat entertained by a municipality 
 which in its legislation legalises the lottery. All 
 gaming may be prejudicial to the moral health 
 of mankind; it is certainly so to their purses. I 
 am prepared to admit, even in face of Madame 
 Mila's direst wrath, that all forms of hazard are 
 exceedingly injurious to the character and to the 
 fortunes of every person tempted by them. It 
 may be impossible even to exaggerate their bane- 
 ful influences or their disastrous consequences. 
 But how can a government which publicly 
 patronizes, sustains, and enriches itself by 
 lotteries, have any logic in condemning the 
 pastime of hazard in a private drawing-room 
 or a private club-house ? I confess I cannot see 
 how they reconcile both courses. A govern- 
 ment, whatever it be, should never be an 
 anomaly." 
 
 " Lotteries are to us what bull-fighting is to 
 Spaniards, and revolutions are to the French," 
 said Carlo Maremma. " Every nation has its 
 especial craze. The lottery is ours " 
 
199 IN A WINTER CITT. 
 
 "But is it for a government to intensify and 
 pander to, and profit by a national insanity ? " 
 said Delia Roccawith much seriousness. "When 
 Rome bent to the yell of Panem et Circences, 
 the days of her greatness were numbered. 
 Besides, the Due is quite right it is a ridiculous 
 anomaly to condemn games while you allow lot- 
 teries. Great harm may result from private 
 gambling greater still from the public gaming- 
 tables but the evil after all is not a millionth 
 part so terrible as the evil resulting from the 
 system of public lotteries. The persons who are 
 ruined by ordinary gaming, are, after all, persons 
 who would certainly be ruined by some vice or 
 another. The compound of avarice and excite- 
 ment which makes the attraction of hazard does 
 not allure the higher kinds of character ; besides, 
 the vice does not go to the player the player 
 goes to the vice. Now, on the contrary, the 
 lottery attacks openly, and tries to allure in 
 very despite of themselves the much wider 
 multitude that is the very sap and support 
 of a nation it entices the people themselves. 
 It lures the workman to throw away his wage 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 199 
 
 the student to spend his time in feverish dreams 
 the simple day-labourer to consume his con- 
 tent in senseless calculations that often bring his 
 poor empty brain, to madness. The lottery 
 assails them in the street, is carried to them in 
 their homes, drops them some poor prize at first 
 to chain them in torment for ever afterwards. It 
 changes honesty to cunning, peace to burning 
 desire, industry to a perpetual waiting upon 
 chance, manly effort to an imbecile abandonment 
 to the dictates of signs and portents, and the ex- 
 pectancy of a fortune which never comes. High- 
 born gamblers are only the topmost leaves of the 
 tree of the State ; they may rot away without 
 detriment to the tree, but the lottery lays the axe 
 to the very trunk and root of it, because it demo- 
 ralises the people." 
 
 Lady Hilda listened, and watched him as he 
 spoke with a grave and almost tender meditation 
 in her eyes ; which M. de St. Louis saw, and 
 seeing, smiled. 
 
 " Say all that in the Chamber, caro mio," mut. 
 tered Carlo Maremma. 
 
 " I would go to the Chambers to say it, or to 
 
800 fN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 worse places even, were there any chance it would 
 be attended to. Madame Mila, have I been so 
 unhappy as to have offended you ? " 
 
 " I am a top leaf that may rot ! I was never 
 told anything so rude in my life from you too ! 
 the very soul of ceremonious courtesy.'* 
 
 Delia Rocca made his peace with her in flowery 
 flattery. 
 
 " Well, I shall play haccarat to-night in this 
 hotel, just because the Prefect has been so odious 
 and done that," said Madame Mila. " You will 
 all come home with me after the Roubleskoff's 
 dinner ? Promise ! " 
 
 " Of course," said the Princess Olga. 
 
 " Of course," said Lady Featherleigh. 
 
 " Of course," said everybody else. 
 
 " And if the gendarmes come in ? n 
 
 " We will shoot them ! " 
 
 " No ; we will give them champagne surer 
 and more humane." 
 
 " I wish the Prefect would come himself I 
 should like to tell him my mind," continued Ma- 
 dame Mila. " So impudent of the man ! when 
 all the Royal Highnesses and Grand Dukes and 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 201 
 
 Duchesses in Europe only come to winter cities 
 for play. He must know that." 
 
 " My dear Mila, how you do put yourself out 
 about it," said the Lady Hilda. " Send ten 
 thousand francs to the public charities you may 
 play all night long in the cafes then." 
 
 " Madame, j'ai 1'honneur de vous saluer," mur- 
 mured Delia Rooca, bending low before her. 
 
 When the door had closed upon him and left 
 the others behind, a sudden blankness and dull- 
 ness seemed to fall on her : she had never felt 
 the same thing before. Bored she had often been, 
 but this was not ennui, it was a kind of loneli- 
 ness it was as if all about her grew grey and 
 cold and stupid. 
 
 More ladies came in, there were endless 
 laughter and chatter ; Princess Olga wanted some 
 tea, and had it ; the other women cracked bon- 
 bons with their little teeth like pretty squirrels 
 cracking fir-cones ; they made charming groups 
 in the firelight and lamplight ; they made plans 
 for a hundred diversions ; they were full of the 
 gayest of scandals ; they dissected in the most 
 merciless manner all their absent friends ; they 
 
202 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 scolded their lovers and gave them a thousand 
 contradictory orders ; they discussed all the 
 news and all the topics of the day, and arranged 
 for dinner parties, and driving parties, and costume 
 quadrilles, and bazaar stalls, and boxes at the 
 theatre, and suppers at the cafes; and agreed 
 that everything was as dull as ditchwater, and 
 yet that they never had a minute for anything ; 
 and the Lady Hilda with the jubilant noise and 
 the twittering laughter round her, thought how 
 silly they all were, and what a nuisance it was 
 having a day only if one hadn't a day it was 
 worse still, because then they were always trying 
 to run in at all hours on every day, and one was 
 never free for a moment. 
 
 " Thank goodness, they are gone ! " she said, 
 half aloud, to the Saxe cups and the Capo di 
 Monte children on the mantelpiece, when the 
 last flutter of fur and velvet had vanished through 
 the door, and the last of those dearest friends 
 and born foes had kissed each other and sepa- 
 rated. 
 
 Left alone, she stood thinking, by the fire, 
 with all the lights burning behind her in that 
 
IN A WINTER CITT. 203 
 
 big, empty room. What she thought was a very 
 humble and pensive thought for so disdainful a 
 lady. It was only 
 
 " Is it myself ? or only the money ? " 
 
 She stood some time there, motionless, her 
 hand playing with the gold girdle as his hand had 
 done ; her face was pale, softened, troubled. 
 
 The clock amongst the Saxe dogs and the 
 Capo di Monte little figures chimed the half- 
 hour after six. She started as it struck, and 
 remembered that she was to dine at eight with 
 the Princess Roubleskoff; a big party for an 
 English royalty on his travels. 
 
 " Anyhow, it would be of no use," she said 
 to herself. " Even if I did wish it, it could 
 never be." 
 
 And she was angry with herself, as she had 
 been the night before ; she was impatient of these 
 new weaknesses which haunted her. Nevertheless 
 she was more particular about her appearance 
 that night than her maids had ever known her 
 be ; she was very difficult to satisfy ; tried and 
 discarded four wholly new confections of her 
 friend Worth's, miracles of invention and of 
 
204 IA T A WINTER CITY. 
 
 costliness, and at length had herself dressed 
 ijuite simply in black velvet, only relieved by all 
 her diamonds. 
 
 " He said fair women should always wear 
 black," she thought : it was not her Magister 
 of Paris of whom she was thinking as the 
 sayer of that wise phrase. And then again she 
 was angry with herself for remembering such a 
 thing, and attiring herself in obedience to it, 
 and would have had herself undrest again only 
 there was but one small quarter of an hour in 
 which to reach the Roubleskoff villa ; a palace of 
 the fairies four miles from the south-gate. So she 
 went as she was; casting a dubious impatient 
 glance behind her at the mirrors. 
 
 " I look well," she thought with a smile, and 
 her content returned. 
 
 She knew that he would be present at the 
 dinner. There is no escaping destiny in Flora- 
 lia : people meet too often. 
 
 The dinner disappointed her. 
 
 She thought it very long and yery stupid. 
 She sat between the Grand Duke of Rittersbahn 
 and the Envoy of all the Russias, and Delia 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 205 
 
 Bocca was not placed within her sight; and 
 after the dinner the young English Prince 
 would talk to no one but herself, delightedly 
 recalling to her how often she had bowled 
 his wickets down when they had been young 
 children playing on the lawns at Osborne. 
 She felt disloyally thankless for his preference. 
 He monopolised her. And as the rooms 
 filled with the crowd of the reception she 
 merely saw the delicate dark head of Delia 
 Rocca afar off, bent down in eager and possibly 
 tender conversation with his beautiful country- 
 woman, the Duchess Medici-Malatesta. She 
 felt angered and impatient. 
 
 If she had sat alone and neglected, as less 
 lovely women often do, instead of being 
 monopolised by a prince, with twenty other 
 men sighing to take his place when etiquette 
 should permit them, she could scarcely have 
 been more ill-content. 
 
 Never in all her life had it befallen her to think 
 angrily of another woman's beauty ; and now sne 
 caught herself irritatedly conning, across the width 
 of the room, the classic profile and the immense 
 
206 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 jewel-like eyes of the Malatesta Seiniramis. 
 Never in all her life had it happened to her 
 to miss any one thing that she desired, and now 
 a strange sense of loneliness and emptiness came 
 upon her, unreasoned and unreasoning; and 
 she had such an impatience and contempt of 
 herself too all the while ! that was the most 
 bitter part of it. 
 
 After all it was too absurd, 
 
 As soon as the departure of the royal guests 
 permitted anyone to leave, she went away, con- 
 temptuous, ill at ease, and out of temper with 
 herself and all the world ; half ignorant of what 
 moved her, and half unwilling to probe her own 
 emotions further. 
 
 " Plus on est fou, plus on rit," she murmured 
 to her pillow two hours later with irritable 
 disdain, as she heard the voices of Mme. Mila 
 and her troop noisily passing her door as they 
 returned to their night-long baccarat, which was 
 to be doubly delightful because of the Prefect's 
 interdict. 
 
 " I wish I had been born an idiot ! " thought 
 the Lady Hilda as, indeed, any one must do 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 207 
 
 who finds himself burdened with aching brains 
 in this best of all possible worlds. 
 
 " Perhaps, after all, you were right," said the 
 Due de St. Louis, driving back into the town 
 with Delia Rocca that night. "Perhaps you were 
 right. Miladi is most lovely, most exquisite, 
 most perfect. But she has caprices there is no 
 denying that she has caprices and extravagancies 
 which would ruin any one short of the despotic 
 sovereign of a very wealthy nation/' 
 
 The Due was a very wise man, and knew that 
 the escalier derobe is the only way that leads in 
 conversation to any direct information. Their 
 demeanour had puzzled him, and he spoke ac- 
 cordingly with shrewd design. 
 
 Delia Rocca heard him with a little annoy- 
 ance. 
 
 " She has not more caprices than other wo- 
 men that I know of," he answered. " Her faults 
 are the faults rather of her monde than of her- 
 self/' 
 
 " But she has adopted them with much affec- 
 tion ! " 
 
 " They are habits hardly more." 
 
08 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " And you were correct too in your diagnosis 
 when you saw her first," continued the Due, piti- 
 lessly. " To me she is most amiable always ; 
 but to the generality of people, it must be ad- 
 mitted that she is not so amiable." 
 
 " The amiability of most women," replied 
 Delia Rocca, "is nothing more than that insa- 
 tiate passion for admiration which makes them 
 show their persons almost nude at Trouville, and 
 copy the ways and manners offemmes entretenues 
 in the endeavour to rival such with us. If 
 they wish to be decent, they do not dare to be ; 
 they must be popular and chic before all." 
 
 " You are severe, but perhaps you are right. 
 Miladi is certainly above all such vulgarities. 
 Indeed, she is only a little too much above every- 
 thing " 
 
 " It is better than to be below everything 
 even below our respect as most of our great 
 ladies are/' 
 
 "Certainly. Still she is a little a little 
 selfish.' 4 , 
 
 " How should she be otherwise ? She is quite 
 s he has no one to cape for " 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 20M 
 
 " Most women make something to care for ; 
 she has many family ties, if she cared for them 
 but she does not. No ; she is beautiful, charm- 
 ing, grande dame en tout but I begin to think 
 that it is well for the peace of mankind that 
 she remains so invulnerable. She would pro- 
 bably make any man who loved her very un- 
 happy if she married him.'* 
 
 " If he were a weak man, not otherwise.*' 
 
 "Pouf! Do you think any man would ever 
 have control over her ? " 
 
 " I am quite sure that she would never care for 
 any man who had not." 
 
 " He would be a very bold person," murmured 
 the Due. " However, I am very glad that you 
 think more highly of her. You know, mon cher, 
 what always was my opinion as to yourself ** 
 
 Delia Rocca coloured, and saw too late that his 
 companion had forced his card from his hands 
 in the most adroit manner. He busied himself 
 with lighting a cigar. 
 
 " For myself," he said, coldly, " I can have no 
 object in what I say. My own poverty is barrier 
 sufficient. But I should be unjust not to admit 
 
210 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 what I think of her, as a friend. I believe that 
 the habits of the world are not so strong with her 
 that they can satisfy her ; and I believe that with 
 her affections touched, with tenderer ties than 
 she has ever known, with a home, with children, 
 with a woman's natural life, in fact, she would be 
 a much happier and very different person. Mais 
 tout cela ne me regarde pas." 
 
 The Due glanced at him and laughed softly, 
 with much amusement. 
 
 " Qa vous regarde de bien pres bon succ^s et 
 bon soir ! " he said, as he got out of the carriage 
 at his hotel in the city. " I told him to marry 
 her," he thought ; " but if he expect to convert 
 her too, he must be the boldest and most 
 sanguine man in Europe." 
 
 Lady Hilda made up her mind that she was 
 tired of Floralia, as she meditated over her choco- 
 late the next morning, after a night which chloral 
 had made pretty passable, only the baccarat 
 people had screamed so loudly with laughter on 
 the other side of the corridor, that they had 
 awakened her once or twice. Yes, she certainly 
 was tired of it. The town was charming, but 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 211 
 
 then one couldn't live on pictures, marbles, and 
 recollections, and one got so sick of seeing the 
 same people morning, noon, and night. The 
 fogs were very bad. The drainage was dreadful. 
 The thermometer was very nearly what it was in 
 Normandy or Northamptonshire for what she 
 could see. If one did take the trouble to go 
 into society, one might as well do it all for a big 
 world and not a little one. It was utter non- 
 sense about her lungs in Paris. She would 
 go back. She would telegraph her return to 
 Hubert. 
 
 Hubert was her maitre d'hotel. 
 
 She did telegraph, and told herself that she 
 would find immense interest in the fresco paint- 
 ings which were being executed in the ball-room 
 of that very exquisite hotel " entre cour et 
 jardin," which she had deserted in Paris, and 
 in making nooks and corners in her already over- 
 filled tables and cabinets for the tazze and bacini 
 and ivories and goldsmith's work she had col- 
 lected in the last two months ; and decided that 
 the wall decorations of the drawing-rooms, which 
 were of rose satin, with Louis Quinze panelling, 
 
 r 2 
 
218 IN A WINTER C/IT. 
 
 were all very barbarous, utterly incorrect, and 
 should never have been borne with so long, and 
 should be altered at once ; the palest amber satin 
 was the only possible thing, with silver mirrors 
 and silver cornices, and not a touch of gilding 
 anywhere ; the idea had occurred to her before a 
 picture in the galleries, where a silver casket 
 was painted against an amber curtain; she would 
 have it done immediately, and she would go back 
 to Paris and have her old Thursday evenings 
 again. 
 
 After all, Paris was the only place worth 
 living in, and doctors were always alarmists old 
 women everything that was stupid, unless you 
 were very very ill, when they did seem to dilate into 
 demi-gods, because of course you were weakened 
 with morphine and other stuff, and did not want 
 to die ; though you ought to want to die, being 
 a Christian, if you were in the very least degree 
 consistent ; since if you were quite sure that the 
 next world would be so very much better than 
 this, it was utterly illogical to be afraid of going 
 to it : but then were you quite sure ? 
 
 The Lady Hilda sighed. This dreadful age, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 213 
 
 which has produced communists, petroleuses, and 
 liberal thinkers, had communicated its vague 
 restlessness even to her ; although she belonged 
 to that higher region where nobody ever thinks 
 at all, and everybody is more or less devout in 
 seeming at any rate, because disbelief is vulgar, 
 and religion is an ' affaire des moaurs,' like de- 
 cency, still the subtle philosophies and sad 
 negations which have always been afloat in the 
 air since Voltaire set them flying, had affected 
 her slightly. 
 
 She was a true believer, just as she was a well- 
 dressed woman, and had her creeds just as she 
 had her bath in the morning, as a matter of course. 
 
 Still, when she did come to think of it, she was 
 not so very sure. There was another world, and 
 saints and angels and eternity, yes, of course, 
 but how on earth would all those baccarat people 
 ever fit into it ? Who could, by any stretch of 
 imagination, conceive Madame Mila and Maurice 
 des Gommeux in a spiritual existence around the 
 throne of Deity ? 
 
 And as for punishment and torment and all 
 that other side of futurity, who could even think 
 
214 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 of the mildest purgatory as suitable to those 
 poor flippertygibbet inanities who broke the 
 seventh commandment as gaily as a child 
 breaks his indiarubber ball, and were as in- 
 capable of passion and crime as they were 
 incapable of heroism and virtue ? 
 
 There might be paradise for virtue, and hell 
 for crime, but what in the name of the universe 
 was to be done with creatures that were only all 
 Folly? Perhaps they would be always flying 
 about like the souls Virgil speaks of, " suspensse 
 ad ventos," to purify themselves ; as the sails of a 
 ship spread out to dry. The Huron Indians pray to 
 the souls of the fish they catch ; well, why should 
 they not ? a fish has a soul if Modern Society 
 has one ; one could conceive a fish going softly 
 through shining waters forever and forever in 
 the ecstacy of motion ; but who could conceive 
 Modern Society in the spheres ? 
 
 Wandering thus from her drawing-room furni- 
 ture to problems of eternity, and only succeeding 
 in making herself unsettled and uncomfortable, 
 the Lady Hilda, out of tune with everything, 
 put off her cashmere dressing-gown, had herself 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 215 
 
 wrapped in her sables, and thought she would go 
 out ; it was just twelve o'clock. 
 
 Looking out of the window she saw a lady all 
 sables like herself, going also out of the hotel to a 
 coupe, the image of her own. 
 
 "Who is that?" she asked of her favourite 
 maid. 
 
 " That is Mdlle. L6a, Miladi," said the maid. 
 " She came last night. She has the suite 
 above." 
 
 " How dare you mention her ? " said the Lady 
 Hilda. 
 
 The little accident filled up the measure of her 
 disgust. Mdlle. Jenny Lea was a young lady who 
 had seduced the affections of an Emperor, three 
 archdukes, and an untold number of the nobility 
 of all nations ; she was utterly uneducated, in- 
 conceivably coarse, and had first emerged from a 
 small drinking shop in the dens of Whitechapel ; 
 she was the rage of the moment, having got a 
 needy literary hack to write her autobiography, 
 which she published in her own name, as 
 " Aventures d'une Anglaise ; " the book had no 
 decency, and as little wit, but it professed to show 
 
216 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 up the scandals of a great Court, and it made 
 some great men ridiculous and worse, so eighty 
 thousand copies of it had been sold over Europe, 
 and great ladies leaned from their carriages eager 
 to see Mdlle. Jenny Lea pass by them. 
 
 Mdlle. Jenny Lea, indeed, having put the finish- 
 ing stroke to her popularity by immense debts and 
 a forced sale of her effects in Paris, was the sensa- 
 tion of the hour, only sharing public attention with 
 the Pere Hilarion, ayoung and passionate^ earnest 
 Dominican, who was making a crusade against the 
 world, in a noble and entirely vain fervour, from 
 the pulpits of all the greatest churches on the 
 Continent. It was " the thing " to go and hear 
 Pere Hilarion, weep with him and pray with him, 
 and then coming out of the church doors to read 
 Jenny Lea and talk of her. It is by these admir- 
 able mixtures that Society manages to keep itself 
 alive. 
 
 The Pere Hilarion was breaking his great heart 
 over the vileness and the hopelessness of it all, as 
 anyone who has any soul in him must be dis- 
 posed to do. But to Society the Pere Hilarion 
 was only a sort of mental liqueur, as Jenny Lea 
 
IN A WINTER CIT7. 117 
 
 was an American " pick-me-up : " that was all. 
 Society took them indifferently, one after the otheij 
 Of the two, of course it preferred Jenny Lea. 
 
 The Lady Hilda in supreme disgust went out 
 in her sables, as Mdlle. Jenny Lea in hers drove 
 from the door. 
 
 " What good things sumptuary laws must have 
 been," she thought. " If such creatures had to 
 dress all in yellow now, as I think they had once 
 (or was it Jews ?), who would talk of them, who 
 would look at them, who would lose money about 
 them ? Not a soul. And to think that there 
 have been eighty thousand people who have bought 
 her book ! " 
 
 " Has anything offended you, Madame ? Who 
 or what is so unhappy ? " said the voice of Delia 
 Rocca, as she crossed the pavement of the court 
 between the lines of bowing hotel functionaries, 
 who had bent their spines double in just the same 
 way to Mdlle. Lea three minutes previously. 
 
 " Nothing in especial," she answered him, 
 coldly. " Those baccarat people kept me awake 
 half the night ; I wish the gendarmes had inter- 
 fered. What wretched weather it is ! " 
 
218 IJVT A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " It is a little cold ; but it is very bright," said 
 Delia Rocca, in some surprise, for the day, indeed, 
 was magnificent and seasonable. " I was coming 
 in the hope that I might be admitted, though 
 I know it is too early, and not your day, and 
 everything that it ought not to be. But I was 
 so unfortunate last night ; you were so mono- 
 polised " 
 
 She deigned to smile a little, but she continued 
 to move to her brougham. 
 
 " Your climate is the very Harpagonof climates. 
 I have not seen one warm day yet. I am thinking 
 of returning to Paris." 
 
 He grew very pale. 
 
 "Is not that very sudden?" he asked her; 
 there was a great change in his voice. 
 
 " Oh, no ; I have my house there, as you know, 
 and Monsieur Odissot is painting the ball-room 
 in frescoes. I have quite a new idea for my 
 drawing-rooms, too ; after all, furnishing is 
 one of the fine arts; do you like that young 
 Odissot's talent? His drawing is perfection; 
 he was a pupil of Hippolyte Flandrin. Good 
 morning.' 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 219 
 
 She was in her coupe by this time, and he was 
 obliged to close the door on her ; but he kept his 
 hand upon it. 
 
 " Since you are leaving us so soon and so 
 cruelly, Madame, would you honour my own old 
 chapel frescoes as you promised ? they might 
 give you some ideas for your ball-room." 
 
 Lady Hilda deigned to smile fairly and fully 
 this time. 
 
 " Is that a satire or a profanity or both 
 together?" 
 
 " It is jealousy of Camille Odissot ! I will go 
 to Paris and paint your frescoes, Madame, if you 
 will let me ; I can paint in fresco and in tempera; 
 I was a student in the Academy of San Luca in 
 my time." 
 
 His words were light, and his manner also, 
 but his eyes had a language that made the Lady 
 Hilda colour a little and look out of the other 
 window of her coupe. 
 
 "I must first call upon Olga; I have pro- 
 mised,*' she answered, irrelevantly. " But I will 
 join you at your palace in an hour ; perhaps she 
 will come with me ; I should not like to leave, 
 
220 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 certainly, without having seen your chapel. Au 
 revoir." 
 
 " If you do leave, Madame, I follow ! to paint 
 the ball-room." 
 
 He shut the carriage-door, and stood bare- 
 headed in the wintry wind as the impatient horses 
 dashed away. When it had disappeared he put 
 his hat on, lighted a cigar, and strolled to his own 
 house. 
 
 " She will not go to Paris," he said to himself. 
 
 He knew women well. 
 
 In an hour and a half she arrived at his own 
 gates, bringing the Princess Olga with her. 
 
 She saw the grand old garden, the mighty 
 staircases, the courts that once held troops of 
 armed men ; she saw his own rooms, with their 
 tapestries that Flemish John Hosts had had the 
 doing of so many centuries before ; she saw the 
 exquisite dim silent chapel, whose walls, painted 
 by the Memmi in one portion and continued by 
 Masaccio, were amongst the famous things of the 
 city. She was moved and saddened; softened 
 too ; after all, the decay of a great race has an un- 
 utterable pathos; it will touch even a vulgar mind; 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 22i 
 
 she, arrogant and fastidious as to birth, as though 
 she had been born before the '89, was touched by 
 it to the core. 
 
 She had heard, too, of how he lived ; without 
 debt, yet with dignity, with the utmost simplicity 
 and without reproach; there was something 
 in his fortunes which seemed to her worthier 
 than all distinction and success, something that 
 stirred that more poetic side of her nature, which 
 the world had never allowed to awake, but which 
 had been born with her nevertheless. She was 
 serious and dreaming as she lingered in the beau- 
 tiful old chapel, under whose mosaic pavement 
 there lay the dust of so many generations of his 
 race. He noticed her silence and thought to 
 himself : 
 
 " Perhaps she is thinking how base it is in a 
 man as poor as I to seek a woman so rich as her- 
 self; " but she was not thinking that at all as 
 she swept on in her sables, with her delicate 
 cheeks, fair as the lovely Niphetos rose, against 
 the darkness of the fur. 
 
 That immortality which she had been doubt- 
 ing in the morning, did not seem so absurdly 
 
222 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 impossible here. There was religion in the place, 
 a different one to what she had known kneeling 
 at the messe des paresseux in the Madeleine ; the 
 sort of religion that a woman only becomes 
 aware of when she loves. 
 
 She started and seemed to wake from a dream 
 when Princess Olga suggested that it was time 
 to go ; Princess Olga was a person of innumer- 
 able engagements, who was always racing after 
 half an hour without ever catching it, like the 
 Minister-Duke of Newcastle, and like ninety-nine 
 people out of every hundred in the nineteenth 
 century. There was some bric-a-brac the Prin- 
 cess wanted somebody to cheapen for her ; 
 she bade him come and do it ; he complied will- 
 ingly enough. They went all three to that bric- 
 a-brac shop, and thence to another, and yet 
 another. Then Princess Olga, who was used 
 to a more brilliant part than that of the " terza 
 incommoda," left them to themselves over Uie 
 faience and marqueterie. 
 
 Lady Hilda who, despite all her fashion, liked 
 walking like every healthy woman, dismissed her 
 horses* *nd walked the length of the river-street, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 223 
 
 he with her. People meeting them hegan to 
 make conjectures, and bets, harder than ever ; and 
 Italian ladies, looking out of their carriage win- 
 dows, wondered for the five -millionth time at the 
 reedom of English women as indeed Italian 
 ladies have good cause to do in far more repre- 
 hensible liberties. 
 
 They walked down to the piazzone and back 
 again. It was growing dusk. She went home to 
 her hotel, and let him enter with her, and had 
 some tea by the firelight ; all the while he made 
 love to her with eyes and gesture and word, as 
 only an Italian can, and she avoided explicit 
 declaration of it, and direct need to reply to it, 
 with all the consummate tact that ten years' prac- 
 tice in such positions had polished in her. 
 
 It was a charming pastime were it nothing 
 more. It was quite a pity when Madame Mila 
 entered unsuspecting, and full of new wrongs 
 in the matter of the Muscadins and fresh gos- 
 sip concerning some forty people's marriages, 
 divorces, debts, ignominies, and infamies. It is 
 fortunate that there are so many wicked people in 
 Society, for if there were not, what would the 
 
224 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 good people have to talk about ? they would die 
 of paralysis of the tongue. 
 
 " You will not leave us for Paris, yet ? " he 
 murmured as he rose, with a sigh, only heard by 
 her ear. 
 
 She smiled, and balanced a Devoniensis tea- 
 rose idly in her hands. 
 
 " Not just yet, if your weather prove better." 
 
 He drew the tea-rose away from her fingers 
 unseen even by the quick marmoset eyes of little 
 Madame Mila, who as it chanced was busied 
 making herself a cup of tea. She let it go. 
 
 " You should have seen all the men looking 
 after that horrible Lea," said Madame Mila, 
 drinking her compound of cream and sugar, as 
 the door closed on him. " They have eyes for 
 nothing else, I do think; and only fancy her 
 having the very suite above mine it is atrocious ! 
 They say the things at her sale fetched fabulous 
 sums. Little pomatum and rouge pots, five hun- 
 dred francs each ! They say she has fixed her 
 mind on young Sant' Andrea here ; I suppose she 
 has heard he is enormously rich. Oh, did yofc 
 know Gwendolen Doncaster has come ? She has 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 225 
 
 lost all her money at Monte Carlo, and she has 
 dyed her hair a nice straw colour ; she looks fif- 
 teen years younger, I do assure you. Don is 
 shooting in Dalmatia of course she abuses him 
 poor old Don ! I wonder how we should have 
 got on if he had married me, as he wanted. 
 Gwen told me Lord Derbyshire has run off with 
 Mrs. Wheelskaitte what he can see in her ! And 
 those open scandals are so stupid, where is the 
 use of them ? Surely you can do what you like 
 without calling all the world in to see you doing 
 it. When a woman has an easy husband she never 
 need compromise herself, and Wheelskaitte cer- 
 tainly always was that. Oh, you never would know 
 them, I remember, because they were new people ; 
 she was an odious creature and very ugly, but 
 they gave very good parties in London, and their 
 cottage was as nice a one as you could go to for 
 Ascot. You used to like little Wroxeter, did not 
 you ? he was such a pretty boy he has just left 
 Eton, and he is wild to marry a girl out of a 
 music-hall, so Gwen says. Those creatures get 
 all the good marriages nowadays : and two hun- 
 dred debutantes waiting to be presented at the 
 
S26 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Drawing-room this month ! Have you seen the 
 new book ' Confessions d'un Feu Follet ' ? Mau- 
 rice has just brought it to me. It is rivalling 
 Jenny Lea, and they say it is worse quite un- 
 mentionable everybody is talking about it. It 
 was out last week, and they have sold five edi- 
 tions. The man called Bistrim in it is Bismarck. 
 No; I don't know that it is witty. I don't 
 think things are witty nowadays. It is horrible 
 and infecte but you can't put it down till you've 
 done it. Old Lady Mauleverer is dying at the 
 Pace hotel here of undigested scandal, Feather- 
 leigh says, but I believe it's gastritis what a 
 nasty old woman she has always been. I have 
 just left a card with inquiries and regrets ; I do 
 hope she won't get better. I won ever so mucli 
 at play last night. I forgot to tell you so : 1 
 bought that rocaille necklace on the Jewellers' 
 Bridge ; it was only six thousand francs, and it 
 really did belong to the Comtesse d' Albany. It's 
 
 very pretty too * 
 
 So Madame Mila discoursed, greatly to her 
 own satisfaction. She loved so much to hear her 
 own tongue, that she always chose the stupidest 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 and silliest of her lovers for her chief favours a 
 clever man had always ideas of his own, and was 
 sure to want to express them sometime or another. 
 All she desired were listeners and echoes. Dis- 
 cussion may be the salt of life to a few, but 
 listeners and echoes are the bonbons and cigarettes 
 that no woman can do without. 
 
 The Lady Hilda sitting looking into the fire, 
 with her eyes nearly closed, murmured yes, and no, 
 and indeed, in the proper places, and let her run 
 on, hearing not one word. Those fingers which had 
 entangled themselves so softly with her own with- 
 drawing the tea-rose, had left a magnetic thrill 
 upon her a dreamy, lulling pleasure. 
 
 That evening the good Hubert received ft 
 second telegram contradicting the first, which had 
 announced his mistress's return, and putting off 
 that return indefinitely. The good Hubert, who 
 was driving her best horses, drinking her best 
 wines, drawing large cheques for accounts never 
 examined, and generally enjoying his winter, was 
 much relieved, and hastened to communicate the 
 happy change to Monsieur Camille Odissot, whom 
 the first telegram had also cast into great conster- 
 
 * 2 
 
228 IN A W1NTEK CITY. 
 
 nation ; since that clever but idle young gentleman, 
 having been pre-paid half the sum agreed on for 
 the fresco-painting, had been spending it joyously 
 after the tastes of young artists, assisted by a 
 pretty brown actress of the Folies Marigny, and 
 had not at that moment even begun to touch 
 the walls and the ceiling of the ball-room con- 
 fided to his genius. 
 
 " But you had better begin, though she is not 
 coming back," said the good Hubert, surveying 
 the blank waste of prepared plaster. " Miladi is 
 not often out of temper, but when she is, ouf ! I 
 would as soon serve a Russian. Better begin ; 
 paint your best, because she knows Miladi 
 knows, and she is hard to please in those things. 
 Not but what I dare say, as soon as you have 
 done it all, she will take it into her head that it 
 looks too cold, or looks too warm, or will not 
 compose well, or something or other, and will 
 cover it all up with silk and satin. But that will 
 not matter to you." 
 
 " Not at all," said Monsieur Camille, who, 
 though he had been a pupil of Flandrin, had 
 learned nothing of that true master's conscien- 
 
IN A friXTEE CITY. 
 
 tiousness in art, but was a clever young man of a 
 new generation, who drew beautifully, as mecha- 
 nically as a tailor stitches beautifully, and was of 
 the very wise opinion that money was every - 
 
CHAPTER 
 
 THE Postiche ball came off, and was a brilliant 
 success. Madame Mila announced the next 
 morning when she got up that she had never 
 enjoyed anything better not even at the Tuil- 
 cries. 
 
 " And the hostess ? " said Lady Hilda. 
 
 " I didn't even see her, thank goodness," said 
 Madame Mila, frankly. " I went late, you know, 
 and she'd been standing at the door four hours, 
 and had got tired, and had gone off duty into the 
 crowd somewhere. Of course it wasn't my busi- 
 ness to go and look for her." 
 
 " Of course not, but you brought off your 
 cotillon things ? " 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 231 
 
 " Yes. There they are," said Madame Mila, un- 
 conscious of any satire. " I never saw such luxe 
 no, not even in the dear old Emperor's time 
 the things everybody got must have cost hundreds 
 of thousands of francs. Certainly little Pickie 
 managed it beautifully. He ordered the whole 
 affair, you know." 
 
 " Little Dickie, or anybody else, could float 
 Medea herself in society if she would brew 
 cotillon toys of a new sort in her cauldron," said 
 the Lady Hilda. 
 
 "Medea?" said Madame Mila, who knew 
 about her because she had seen Ristori so often. 
 " Poor thing ! it was that horrid Jason that 
 deserved to be put out of society, only men never 
 do get put out of it for anything they do ; I don't 
 know how it is we cut no end of women, but 
 we never cut a man. Well, I assure you, my 
 dear, the ball was charming charming, though 
 you do look so contemptuous. "We had all our 
 own people, and saw nobody else, all night. I 
 don't think I need bow to the woman, do you ? 
 I'm not supposed to have seen her, though I do 
 know her by sight, a little podgy sunburnt-looking 
 
232 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 fat creature with liveries for all the world like 
 what the sheriffs have in England at assize time. 
 No ; I'm sure I needn't bow to her. I told 
 Dickie beforehand I shouldn't." 
 
 " No doubt Dickie was delighted to have you 
 on any terms." 
 
 " Of course ; and I'll send a card to-day," said 
 Madame Mila, with the magnanimous air of one 
 who does a very noble thing. 
 
 From that time thenceforward she would forget 
 the Joshua E. Postiches and everything concern- 
 ing them as absolutely as if she had never heard 
 anything about them ; the woman's second ball, 
 if she gave one, would be nothing new, and no 
 sort of fun whatever. 
 
 " You're always at me about Maurice,*' she 
 said, pursuing her own ideas, " Look at Olga 
 with Carlo Maremma ! she did make him go last 
 night, and he was the only Italian there. You 
 talk of Maurice Olga is twice as careless as I 
 am " 
 
 " Olga is my friend; don't discuss her, please." 
 
 " Oh, that's very fine ! when you are always 
 finding fault with me about Maurice 1 " 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 233 
 
 W II . - I . . . I ...., ... . . 
 
 " I should not let any third person blame you." 
 
 "You are very strange, Hilda,'* said Madame 
 Mila, eyeing her with a curious wonder, and 
 ruffling herself up in her embroidered pink 
 cashmere dressing-gown, as if she were a little 
 bird in the heart of a big rose. " Why should 
 you defend people behind their back? No- 
 body ever does. We all say horrible things 
 of one another; but we don't mean half of 
 them, so what does it matter? I don't blame 
 Olga, not in the least; Schouvaloff is a brute, 
 and, besides, he knows it very well, and he 
 doesn't mind a bit ; indeed, of course he's glad 
 enough " 
 
 " I do blame Olga ; but I can't see how you 
 can," said her cousin, coldly. 
 
 Madame Mila ruffled herself more, looking 
 more and more like a little angry bird in the 
 middle of a pink rose. 
 
 " I ? Pray what can anybody say of me ? 
 Spiridion is always with me half the year at least. 
 Spiiidion is extremely fond of Maurice, so are all 
 the children. He's at another hotel, right at the 
 other end of the place ; really I can't see why 
 
234 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 I must rush out of a town because a friend 
 happens to come into it also " 
 
 " My dear Mila, pray don't talk that nonsense 
 to me," said her cousin, serenely. " I daresay 
 ten years hence you will many your little Lili to 
 M. des Gommeux; people do do that sort of thing, 
 though they find fault with the plots of the old 
 Greek plays. I suppose it " saves society ; " at 
 least, it saves appearances. Olga is imprudent, 
 I know, and wrong; but, at least she has the 
 courage of her opinions; she does not talk all 
 that pusillanimous prurient absurdity about 
 'friendship.'" 
 
 " Nobody can understand you, Hilda ; and I 
 don't know what you mean about Greek plays," 
 muttered Madame Mila. " Everybody lives in 
 the same way : you talk as if it were only me f 
 Spiridion never says a word to me; what business 
 have you ? " 
 
 " None in the least, dear ; only you will bring 
 up the subject Qui s'excuse s'accuse. That is 
 all. Yo'i are not coming out this morning? 
 Au revoir then; I am going to see a newly- 
 found San Cipriano il Mago outside the gates ; 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 235 
 
 they think it is by II Moretto. The face and 
 dress are Venetian, they say ; but you care no- 
 thing about all that, do you ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Madame Mila, with a yawn. 
 " I suppose if it take your fancy you'll be buying 
 the whole church with it in, if you can't get 
 it any other way. I wish I'd your money, I 
 wouldn't waste it on old pictures, that only make 
 a room dark ; and the kind of light they want is 
 horribly unbecoming to people." 
 
 " I promise you I shall not hang an altar-piece 
 in a room," said the Lady Hilda. " I leave that 
 for the heretics and the bourgeoisie. Good-bye, 
 my dear." 
 
 " Who's going with you ? " cried Madame 
 Mila, after her : Lady Hilda hesitated a moment. 
 
 " Nina is, and the French artist who has dis- 
 covered the Moretto, and M. della Rocca." 
 
 Madame Mila laughed, and took up a little 
 mirror to see if all the colour on her face were 
 quite right. One horrible never-to-be-forgotten 
 Jay one eyebrow had been higher than the 
 other. 
 
 Lady Hilda, descending the hotel staircase, 
 
236 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 met the faithful Maurice ascending. That slender 
 and indefatigable leader of cotillons swept 
 his hat to the ground, twisted the waxed ends of 
 his small moustache, and murmured that he 
 was about to inquire of the servants if Madame 
 la Comtesse were " tout-a-fait remise apres ses 
 fatigues incroyables." 
 
 Lady Hilda, whom he feared very greatly, 
 passed him with a chilly salutation, and he went 
 on up the stairs, and in two minutes' time was 
 assuring Madame Mila that she was "fraiche 
 comme la rosee du matin," which did credit to his 
 ready chivalry of compliments, since he was aware 
 of all the mysteries of those bright cheeks and 
 that small pomegranate-like mouth, and had even 
 once or twice before great balls, given an artistic 
 touch or two to their completion, having 
 graduated with much skill and success in such 
 accomplishments under the tuition of Mademoi- 
 selle Rose The, and La Petite Boulotte. 
 
 The San Cipriano was to be found in a church 
 some five miles out of the city ; a lonely church set 
 high on a fragrant hill-side, with sheep amongst 
 the olive boughs, and the ox-plough under the 
 
IN A WINTER (J1TX. 237 
 
 vines that were all about it, and high hedges ol 
 wild roses and thickets of arbutus rambling 
 around its old walled graveyard. 
 
 The paths close round it were too steep for 
 the horses, and the last half mile had to be 
 climbed on foot. 
 
 It was one of those spring days which often 
 fall in February ; the ground was blue with 
 violets, and the grass golden with crocus and 
 hepatica ; there were butterflies and bees on the 
 air ; the mavis and blackbird were singing. 
 
 The San Cipriano hung over a side altar in 
 the dark, desolate, grand old church, where no 
 worshipper ever came except a tired peasant, or 
 a shepherd sheltering from a storm. 
 
 Delia Rocca pulled aside the moth-eaten cur- 
 tains from the adjacent window, and let the sun- 
 shine in. Some little children were sitting on 
 the altar- steps stringing daisies and berries ; the 
 light made a halo about their heads ; the deep 
 Venetian colours of the forgotten picture glanced 
 like jewels through the film of the dust of ages. 
 Its theme was the martyrdom of the Magician 
 and of S' Justina ; beneath were the crowds of 
 
238 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Nicomedia and the guards of Diocletian, above 
 were the heavens opened and the hosts of waiting 
 angels. It was a great theme greatly treated by 
 the great Brescian who, although the pupil of 
 Titian and the rival of Veronese is so little 
 known, save in the cities that lie betwixt the 
 Dolomites and the Apennines. 
 
 " It is one of the most beautiful legends that 
 we have, to my thinking," said Delia Rocca, when 
 they had studied it minutely and in all lights. 
 " It has been very seldom selected by painters 
 for treatment ; one wonders why ; perhaps be- 
 cause there is too much human passion in it for 
 a sacred subject." 
 
 " Yes," said Lady Hilda, dreamily. " One 
 can never divest oneself of the idea that S. Jus- 
 tina loved him with an earthly love." 
 
 " Oh, Hilda ! how pagan of you," said the 
 Marchesa del Trasimene, a little aghast. 
 
 " Not at all. Why should we doubt it ? " said 
 Delia Rocca, quickly. "Why should we deny 
 that a pure love would have power against the 
 powers of the world ? " 
 
 Lady Hilda looked at him, and a great softness 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 239 
 
 came into her face ; then she stooped to the little 
 children playing with the berries on the altar- 
 steps, and put some money in their little brown 
 hands. 
 
 "It is a very fine picture," she said, after a 
 moment's pause. " I do not think I have ever 
 Been brown and gold and crimson so beautifully 
 managed, and fused in so deep a glo^ of colour 
 save in Palma Vecchio's S. Barbara you re- 
 member in S. Maria Formosa in Venice ? " 
 
 "The portrait of Violante Palma yes. But 
 this subject has a deeper and warmer interest. 
 S. Barbara with her tower and her cannon is too 
 strong to touch one very much. One cannot 
 think that she ever suffered." 
 
 " Yet S. Barbara has a very wide popularity, 
 if one may use the word to a saint." 
 
 " All symbols of strength have ; the people are 
 weak ; they love what will help them. It is very 
 singular what deep root and vast fame one saint 
 has, and how obscure remains another ; yet both 
 equal in holiness and life, and courage of death. 
 Perhaps the old painters have done it by the fre- 
 quency of their choice of certain themes." 
 
40 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Oh, no," said Lady Hilda ; " be sure the 
 painters rather followed the public preference than 
 directed it. Poets lead; painters only mirror. 
 I like this San Cipriano very much. They did 
 not say too much of it. It is left to dust and 
 damp. Could I buy it do you think ? " 
 
 " I dare say, I will inquire for you to-morrow. 
 We sell anything now. When the public debt is 
 a little heavier, and the salt tax is protested 
 against, we shall sell the Transfiguration why 
 not? we have a copy at S. Peter's. Indeed, 
 why keep the S. Cecilia doing nothing in a dark 
 old city like Bologna, when its sale with a few 
 others might make a minister or a senator well off 
 for life?" 
 
 " Do not be so bitter, Paolo," said the Mar- 
 chesa Nina, "you might have been a minister 
 yourself." 
 
 "And rebuilt Palestrina out of my commission 
 on the tax on cabbages! Yes, I have lost my 
 opportunities." 
 
 The Lady Hilda was gazing at the clouds of 
 angels in the picture, who bore aloft the martyred 
 fcouls in their immortal union ; and from them 
 
A WINTER CITY. 241 
 
 she glanced at the little fair wondering faces of 
 the peasant children. She had never thought 
 about children ever in any way, save as little 
 figures that composed well in Stothard's draw- 
 ings, in Sir Joshua's pictures, in Correggio's 
 frescoes. Now, for a second, the thought glanced 
 through her that women were happy who had 
 those tender soft ties with the future of the world. 
 What future had she ? You cannot make a 
 future out of diamonds, china, and M. Worth. 
 
 " You really wish to buy the San Cipriano ? " 
 he asked her, as they passed over the worn, 
 damp pavement towards the sunlight of the opon 
 door. 
 
 " Yes you seem to think it sacrilege ? " 
 " No ; I think the moral decadence of feeling 
 which makes it possible for my nation to sell such 
 things is a sacrilege against our past, and a 
 violation of the rights of our posterity ; but 
 that is another matter, and no fault of yours, 
 What will you do with it when you have it I " 
 " I will put it in my oratory in Paris/' 
 The answer jarred on him; yet there was no 
 other which he could have expected. 
 
242 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " How naturally you think of bu} T ing all you 
 see ! " he said, a little impatiently. " I suppose 
 that power of acquisition that wand of posses- 
 sion is very dear to you." 
 
 " What do you mean ? I do not know it is a 
 habit. Yes ; I suppose one likes it." 
 
 "No doubt. Your riches are to you as his 
 magic was to San Cipriano yonder : the wil- 
 lingest of slaves." 
 
 " What ! an evil spirit then ? " 
 
 " Not necessarily. But " 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 "A despot, though a slave. One who holds 
 your soul ; as the powers of darkness held his, 
 until a great and spiritual love set him free." 
 
 They were passing out of the open doorway 
 into the calm golden light of the passing day. 
 Through the fine tracery of the olive -boughs the 
 beautiful valley shone like a summer sea. Before 
 them, above the southern mountains, the sun 
 was going down. Her eyes grew dim for a 
 moment as she looked. His hand had closed on 
 hers ; she let it lie within his clasp ; it was the 
 first gesture of tenderness she had ever allowed 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 243 
 
 to him. Then at a sudden recollection she with- 
 drew it, and she smiled with her old serene indif- 
 ference. 
 
 " You will talk to me in unknown tongues ! S. 
 Justina was a holy woman ; I am not. I am not 
 sure that I ever did any unselfish thing in all my 
 life. How many violets there are; gather me 
 some.*' 
 
 The others drew near ; he left her and gathered 
 the violets. They were countless ; the old church 
 was left alone to perish ; no foot of priest or wor- 
 shipper now ever trod upon their purple glories. 
 
 She leaned over the low wall of the grave-yard, 
 and watched the setting sun. She felt that her 
 eyes were full of tears. 
 
 " If I had met him earlier " she thought. 
 
 They walked down through the olive thickets, 
 along the grassy slopes of the hill, to the 
 carriage, and drove home in the now waning 
 light. 
 
 She was capricious, contemptuous, ironical, 
 arrogant, in everything she said, lying hack with 
 the furs covering her from the chill evening 
 frinds. 
 
244 IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 " Does going to a church alway make you so 
 caustic, cara mia ? " said the Marchesa Nina. 
 
 Delia Rocca was very silent. The French artist 
 kept up the ball of talk with her and the lovely 
 Marchesa, and played the gay game well. The sun 
 sank quite ; the brief twilight came ; then darkness ; 
 the horses took them down through the walled 
 lanes and the rose hedges into the narrow streets, 
 where here and there the lamps were twinkling, 
 and the glow of the wood fires shone through the 
 grated casements. 
 
 The carriage paused first at the Hotel Murat. 
 
 " I shall see you to-night at Princess Fiirsten- 
 berg's, Hilda, of course ? " said the Marchesa. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said the Lady Hilda as she descen- 
 ded, drawing her sables closer around her. " You 
 will be there, I suppose?*' she added, with a 
 little change of her voice, to Delia Rocca, as he 
 held his arm for her to alight. He looked 
 straight down into her eyes. 
 
 " I think not," he said, simply. "Good night, 
 Madame." 
 
 He stood with his head uncovered, whilst she 
 went up the steps of the hotel ; then, as the door 
 
JJV A WINTER CITY. 245 
 
 closed on her, he walked away to his own old 
 house. 
 
 Lady Hilda went up to her own rooms ; she 
 had a knot of violets with her. Before she put 
 them in water she touched them with her lips 
 as any girl of sixteen or any peasant Gretchen 
 might have done. 
 
 That night at the Princess Fiirstenberg's one 
 of the pleasantest houses of the winter city men 
 and women hoth said to one another that they 
 had never seen her looking more beautiful, or more 
 magnificent in the blaze of her jewels, but they 
 found her colder, and more difficult to converse 
 with than ever, and were more than ever hope- 
 lessly impressed with the sense of their own abso- 
 lute nullity in her eyes. 
 
 He was not there. 
 
 She stayed but a brief time ; long enough to 
 chill every one there like ice, which was the effect 
 she always produced in society, when it was so 
 unhappy as not to please her; then, having 
 frozen it, she left it, the ladies who remained 
 breathing freer when her delicate loveliness and 
 her mighty emeralds had ceased to outshine 
 
246 IN A WINTER CITY, 
 
 them. She sank back in her carriage with a 
 great sigh. 
 
 The homeward streets led past the palace of 
 the Delia Rocca. She let the window down, and 
 looked outward as she passed it. She saw a 
 single casement alone lighted in the great black 
 mass of frowning stone, with its machicolated 
 walls and iron stanchions. It was above the en- 
 trance ; she knew it was his favourite room ; where 
 his books were, and his old bronzes, and his 
 favourite weapons. 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears again as she looked 
 up at the solitary light. She felt for the little 
 cluster of violets that she had fastened under the 
 great emeralds in her bosom, his hand had 
 gathered them. 
 
 " If anyone had told me I would care ! " she 
 thought to herself. 
 
 The tears on her lashes stole slowly down, and 
 dimmed the emeralds and refreshed the violets. 
 
 She was the most heartless creature in the 
 world; the coldest and most self-engrossed of 
 women, her friends and acquaintances were 
 saying after her departure, in the drawing-rooms 
 
7JV A WINTER CITY. 247 
 
 of the Princess Fiirstenberg ; not like her 
 cousin; dear little Madame Mila was all good 
 nature, all kindliness, all heart. 
 
 At the Fiera for the orphan children the week 
 before had not dear little Madame Mila slaved 
 herself to death ; bustling about in the most be- 
 witching costume ; whirling like a little Japanese 
 wind-mill ; wearing the loveliest little muslin 
 apron, with huge pockets, into which thousands 
 of francs were poured ; turning the lottery-wheel 
 indefatigably for three days, and selling cigars 
 she had lighted, and lilies of the valley she had 
 kissed, at the most fabulous prices for the good 
 of the poor ? And had not Lady Hilda con- 
 temptuously refused to have anything to do with 
 the Fiera at all? 
 
 The almoner of the charities, indeed, had 
 received a fifty-thousand franc note anonymously. 
 But then, how could anybody divine that the 
 Lady Hilda had sent it because a chance word of 
 Delia Rocca's had sunk into her mind ? Whereas 
 everybody saw Madame Mila whirling, and saying 
 so prettily, " Pour nos pauvres ! pour nos chers 
 pauvres ! " 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE next morning they brought her a note ; it 
 said that he had inquired ahout the San Cipriano, 
 but the matter had to be referred to some autho- 
 rity absent in Rome, and there could be no 
 answer for a few days, perhaps weeks ; the note 
 was signed with the assurance of the highest con- 
 sideration of the humblest of her servants, 
 Paolo della Rocca. 
 
 The note might have been read from the house- 
 top : she had had letters from him of a different 
 strain; charming little brief letters, about a 
 flower, about an opera-box, about a piece of pot- 
 tery, always about some trifle, but making the 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 249 
 
 trifle the medium of a delicately-veiled homage, 
 and a softly -hinted tenderness. 
 
 She tossed the note into the fire, and saw his 
 name burn in the clear flame of a pine branch : 
 why could he not have called instead of writing ? 
 
 She was restless all day, and nothing pleased 
 her : not even M. de St. Louis, who did call and 
 sat a long time, and was in his most delightful 
 humour, and full of new anecdotes about every- 
 body and everything : but he did not mention 
 Delia Rocca. 
 
 The Due found no topic that suited her. It 
 was the Cor so di Gala that afternoon, would 
 she not go ? 
 
 No : her horses hated masks, and she hated 
 noise. 
 
 The Veglione on Sunday would she not go 
 to that ? 
 
 No : those things were well enough in the 
 days of Philippe d'Orle'ans, who invented them, 
 but they were only now as stupid as they were 
 vulgar ; anybody was let in for five francs. 
 
 Did she like the new weekly journal, that was 
 electrifying Paris ? 
 
 \ 
 
250 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 No : she could see nothing in it : there was no 
 wit now-a-daj^s only personalities, which grew 
 more gross every year. 
 
 The Due urged that personalities were as old 
 as Cratinus and Archilochus, and that five hun- 
 dred years before Christ the satires of Hipponax 
 drove Bupalus to hang himself. 
 
 She answered that a had thing was not the 
 hetter for being old. 
 
 People were talking of a clever English novel 
 translated everywhere, called " In a Hothouse," 
 the hothouse being society had she seen it ? 
 
 No : what was the use of reading novels of 
 society by people who never had been in it? 
 The last English " society " novel she had read 
 had described a cabinet minister in London as 
 going to a Drawing-room in the crowd, with 
 everybody else, instead of by the petite entree ; 
 they were always full of such blunders* 
 
 Had she read the new French story *' Le Bal 
 de Mademoiselle Bibi ? " 
 
 No : she had heard too much of it ; it made 
 you almost wish for a Censorship of the Press. 
 
 The Due agreed that literature was terribly 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 251 
 
 but truly described as " un tas d'ordures soig- 
 
 neusemerit enveloppeV* 
 
 She said that the " tas d'ordures" without the 
 envelope was sufficient for popularity, but that 
 the literature of any age was not to be blamed 
 it was only a natural growth, like a mushroom ; 
 if the soil were noxious, the fungus was bad 
 
 The Due wondered what a censorship would 
 let pass if there were one. 
 
 She said that when there was one it had let 
 pass Crebillon, the Chevalier Le Clos, and 
 the "Bijoux Indiscrets;" it had proscribed Mar- 
 montel, Helvetius, and Lanjuinais. She did 
 not know how one man could be expected to be 
 wiser than all his generation. 
 
 The Due admired some majolica she had pur- 
 chased. 
 
 She said she began to think that majolica was 
 a false taste ; the metallic lustre was fine, but 
 how clumsy the forms ; one might be led astray 
 by too great love of old work. 
 
 The Due praised a magnificent Sevres panel, 
 just painted by Eiocreux and Goupil, and given 
 to her by Princess Olga on the New Year. 
 
25i IN A W1NTEE CITY. 
 
 She said it was well done, but what charm 
 was there in it ? All their modern iron and zinc 
 colours, and hydrate of aluminum, and oxide of 
 chromium, and purple of Cassius, and all the rest 
 of it, never gave one-tenth the charm of those old 
 painters who had only green greys and dull 
 blues and tawny yellows, and never could get 
 any kind of red whatever; Olga had meant to 
 please her, but she, for her part, would much 
 sooner have had a little panel of Abruzzi, with 
 all the holes and defects in the pottery, and a 
 brown contadina for a Madonna; there was 
 some interest in that, there was no interest in 
 that gorgeous landscape and those brilliant 
 hunting figures. 
 
 The Due bore all the contradictions with im- 
 perturbable serenity and urbanity, smiled to him- 
 self, and bowed himself out in perfect good 
 humour. 
 
 "Tout va bien," he thought to himself; 
 "Miladi must be very much in love to be so cross." 
 
 The Due's personal experience amongst ladies 
 iiad made him of opinion that love did not im- 
 prove the temper. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 263 
 
 " The carriage waits, Miladi," said her servant. 
 
 " I shall not drive to-day," said Lady Hilda. 
 " Tell them to saddle Said." 
 
 It was a brilliant day ; all the bells were peal- 
 ing ; and the sunshine and the soft wind stream- 
 ing in. She thought a ten-mile stretch across 
 the open country might do her good; at any 
 rate, it would be better than sitting at home, or 
 pacing slowly in the procession of the Corso di 
 Gala, which was only a shade less stupid than 
 the pelting Corso. 
 
 Said was a swift, nervous, impetuous horse ; 
 the only sort of horse she cared to ride ; and he 
 soon bore her beyond the gates, leaving the 
 carriages of her friends to crush each other in 
 the twisting streets, and vie in state liveries and 
 plumes and ribbons and powdered servants, and 
 amuse the good-natured, kindly, orderly crowds 
 of Floralia, clustered on the steps of churches 
 and under the walls of palaces. 
 
 She rode against the wind, as straight as 
 the state of the roads would permit her, as 
 wonderful a sight to the astonished country 
 people as though she had been S. Margarita on 
 
254 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 her dragon. Said took a few stone walls and 
 aunkened fences, which put him on good terms 
 with himself. She was in no mood to spare him, 
 or avoid any risks it might amuse him to run ; 
 and they had soon covered many more miles than 
 she knew. 
 
 " Where are we ? " she asked her groom, 
 when Said slackened his pace at last. 
 
 The groom, who was a Scotchman, had no 
 idea and no power of asking. 
 
 " It does not matter," said his mistress, and 
 rode on again. 
 
 They were on a tolerably broad road, with a 
 village above them, on a steep green vine-clad 
 hill there were the usual olive orchards every- 
 where, with great almond trees full of blossom 
 and white as driven snow, and farther still all 
 around the countless curves of the many moun- 
 tain spurs that girdle the valley of Floralia. 
 There was another stone wall in front of them ; 
 beyond it the turf looked fresh and pleasant ; 
 she put Said at it, but someone from a distance 
 called out to her in Italian, " For God's sake 
 stop the horse!*' 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 255 
 
 On the other side of the wall the ground fell 
 suddenly to a depth of twenty feet. 
 
 She caught up Said's head in time only by a 
 moment; he stood erect on his hind legs a 
 second, hut she kept her seat unshaken ; she 
 thought he would lose his balance and fall back 
 on her ; but she stilled and controlled him with 
 the coolest nerve. As he descended on his 
 front feet, Delia Rocca came through a high iron 
 gate on the left, leapt a ditch, and sprang to the 
 horse's head. 
 
 " How can you do such mad things ?" he said, 
 with a quiver in his voice. " That gate was 
 locked ; I could only shout to you. I thought 
 I was too late " 
 
 His face was pale as death ; her colour had 
 not even changed. She looked at him and smiled 
 a little. 
 
 " So many thanks it is a silly habit taking 
 walls ; I learned to like it when I was a child, 
 and rode with my brother. Said is not fright- 
 ened now ; you may let him alone. Where are 
 we?" 
 
 " On the ground of Palestrina." 
 
258 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Palestrina ! I see nothing of your villa." 
 
 " We are eight miles from the villa. It lies 
 beyond those other hills but all the ground here 
 is mine. I was visiting one of my farms. By 
 heaven's mercy I saw you " 
 
 His voice still faltered, and his face was pale 
 with strong emotion ; his hand had closed on 
 hers, and rested on her knee. 
 
 " You were behind that tall gate then ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I have the key of that gate, but the 
 lock was rusted. Come and rest a moment, you 
 are a long way from Floralia. There is an old 
 farmhouse here ; they are all my own people." 
 
 She dismounted and threw the bridle to her 
 groom. 
 
 " It terrifies you more than it did me," she 
 said, with a little laugh. 
 
 He took both her hands and kissed them ; he 
 did not answer, neither did she rebuke him. 
 
 He led her through the iron gate down a grassy 
 path between the grey gnarled olive trees and 
 the maples with their lithe red boughs ; there 
 was a large old house with clouds of pigeons 
 round it, and great mulberry trees near, and sculp- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 257 
 
 tured shields and lions on the walls ; women ran 
 to him delightedly, men left their ploughs afar 
 off and came, eager and bareheaded, to see if there 
 was any chance to serve him; he was their 
 prince, their lord, their idol, their hest friend ; as 
 their fathers had followed his to the death, so 
 would they have followed him. Half a dozeii 
 flew to do each word of his bidding ; brought in 
 the horse, brought out an oaken settle for her in 
 the sun, brought fresh water from the spring, 
 fresh lemons from the tree, fresh violets from the 
 hedges. At a sign from him one of the shepherd- 
 boys, who was famous for his singing, came and 
 stood before them, and sang to his guitar some of 
 the love-songs of the province in a sweet tenor 
 voice, liquid as the singing of nightingales. The 
 green and gracious country was around, the low 
 sun made the skies of the west radiant, the smell 
 of the woods and fields rose fresh from the 
 earth. She drank the draught he made for her, 
 and listened to the singing, and watched the 
 simple pastoral, old-world life around her, and 
 felt her heart thrill as she met the amorous 
 worship of his eyes. 
 
258 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 She had never thought of natural beauty, or of 
 the lives of the poor, save now and then when 
 they had been recalled to her by some silvery 
 landscape of Corot, or some sad rural idyl of 
 Millet; as she sat here, she felt as if she had 
 passed all her life in some gorgeous heated 
 theatre, and had only now come out into the 
 open air, and under the arch of heaven. 
 
 There was a wonderful dreamy, lulling charm 
 in this olive-hidden solitude ; she did not care to 
 move, to think, to analyze. He did not speak to 
 her of love ; they both avoided words, which, 
 spoken, might break the spell of their present 
 peace and part them ; but every now and then his 
 eyes looked into hers, and were heavy with the 
 langour of silent passion, and stirred her heart to 
 strange sweet tumult. 
 
 When the boy sang the passionate, plaintive 
 love-songs, then her face grew warm, and her 
 eyelids fell it was no longer an unknown tongue 
 to her. 
 
 She would not think of the future she re- 
 gigned herself to the charm of the hour. 
 
 So also did he. 
 
IN A WINTER C/T1. Stb9 
 
 The night before he had resolved to avoid her, 
 to cease to see her, to forget her. She had 
 wounded him, and he had told himself that it 
 was best to let the world have her, body and soul. 
 Now chance had overruled his resolve : he could 
 not war with his fate he let it come as it might. 
 He had found his way to influence her ; he knew 
 that he could move her as no other could ; yet 
 he hesitated to say to her what must unite them 
 or part them. 
 
 Besides, since this woman had grown dear to 
 him with a passion born alike out of her phy- 
 sical beauty and his own sense of power on her, 
 and his insight into the richer possibilities of her 
 nature, the colder calculations which had occupied 
 him at his first knowledge of her seemed to him 
 base and unworthy : if he had not loved her he 
 would have pursued her with no pang of conscience ; 
 having grown to love her, to love her loveliness, 
 and her pride, and her variableness, and her 
 infinite charm, and her arrogant faults, to love 
 her in a word, and to desire indescribably to lead 
 her from the rank miasma of the pleasures and 
 pomps of the world into a clearer and higher 
 
 2 
 
260 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 spiritual atmosphere, he recoiled more and more, 
 day by day, from seeking her as the medium of 
 his own fortune, he checked himself more and 
 more in the utterance of a passion which could 
 but seem to her mingled at the least with the 
 lowest of motives. 
 
 He was her lover, he did not disguise it from 
 himself or her ; but he paused before doing that 
 which would make him win or lose it all; not 
 because he feared his fate, but because he could 
 not bring himself to the acceptance of it. 
 
 " Sing me something yourself," she said to 
 him; and he took the boy's mandolin and, 
 leaning against the porch of the house, touched 
 a chord of it now and then, and sang her every 
 thing she would, while the sun shone in the 
 silver of the olives and the afternoon shadows 
 stole slowly down the side of the mountains. 
 Then he sat down on the steps at her feet, and 
 talked to her of his people, of his land, of his 
 boyhood and his youth. 
 
 " I have lived very much in the great world," 
 he said, after a time. " This world which you 
 think is the only one. But I am never so well 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 261 
 
 content as when I come back here under my 
 olives. I suppose you cannot understand that?" 
 
 " I am not sure yes, perhaps. One grows 
 tired of everything," she answered with a little 
 sigh. 
 
 "Everything that is artificial, you mean. 
 People think Horace's love of the rural life an 
 affectation. I believe it to be most sincere. 
 After the strain of the conventionality and 
 the adulation of the Augustan Court, the 
 natural existence of the country must have 
 been welcome to him. I know it is the 
 fashion to say that a love of Nature be- 
 longs only to the Moderns, but I do not 
 think so. Into Pindar, Theocritus, Meleager, 
 the passion for Nature must have entered very 
 strongly; what is modern is the more subjective, 
 the more fanciful, feeling which makes Nature a 
 sounding-board to echo all the cries of man." 
 
 " But that is always a northern feeling ? " 
 
 "Inevitably. With us Nature is too riante 
 for us to grow morbid about it. The sunshine 
 that laughs around us nine months of every year, 
 the fruits that grow almost without culture, the 
 
262 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 flowers that we throw to the oxen to eat, the 
 very stones that are sweet with myrtle, the very 
 sea sand that is musical with bees in the rosemary, 
 everything we grow up amongst from infancy 
 makes our love of Nature only a kind of un- 
 conscious joy in it but here even the peasant 
 has that, and the songs of the men that 
 cannot read or write are full of it. If a field 
 labourer sing to his love he will sing of the 
 narcissus and the crocus, as Meleager sang to 
 Heliodora twenty centuries ago " 
 
 " And your wild narcissus is the true narcis- 
 sus; the Greek narcissus, with its many bells 
 to one stem ? " 
 
 " Yes. In March and April it will be out 
 everywhere in the fields and woods about 
 here. I thought once that you loved flowers 
 as you loved art, merely as a decoration of 
 your salon. But I was wrong. They are 
 closer to your heart than that. Why do you 
 deny your emotions ? Why do you mask 
 yourself under such cold phrases as those you 
 used to me yesterday ? " 
 
 She smiled a little. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 263 
 
 " How should I remember what I said so long 
 back as yesterday ? " 
 
 " That is hard ! for those who hear may 
 remember for a lifetime. Your words kept me 
 from where you were last night." 
 
 " What I say at any time is worth but little 
 thought. I fear you think too well of me always," 
 she said, on a sudden vague impulse and the first 
 pang of humility that she had ever allowed to 
 smite the superb vanity that had always en- 
 wrapped her. 
 
 With a soft grace of action he touched with 
 his lips the hem of her riding skirt. 
 
 "No," he said simply, "you might indeed ' daze 
 one to blindness like the noonday sun.' But I 
 am not blind. I see in you many errors, more 
 against yourself than others ; I see the discontent 
 which always argues high unsatisfied desire, and 
 the caprice which is merely the offshoot of too 
 long indulgence of all passing fancies ; but what 
 matter these ? your nature and the nobility of it 
 lie underneath them in a vein of gold unworked. 
 You have had the language of flattery to nausea : 
 I do not give it you ; I say but what I believe." 
 
264 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 The tears sprang into her eyes, and the music 
 of his voice thrilled through her. 
 
 She did not care to wait for the words that 
 she knew would follow as his fingers stole and 
 clasped hers close, and she felt on her the gaze 
 she did not dare to meet. She rose, and 
 glanced to the west. 
 
 " The sun is just gone behind the hills. I 
 shall he late. Will you tell them to bring me 
 Said?' 
 
 He rose, too, and did not oppose her departure. 
 
 " I rode here myself, fortunately," he said. 
 " You must allow me to go with you into 
 Floralia ; the roads are bad and hard to find." 
 
 They brought Said out of the great wooden 
 sweet-smelling outhouse, and he raised her in 
 silence to her saddle. He gave her a little knot 
 of the fragrant leafless calycanthus with a few 
 sprays of myrtle ; she put it in her bosom ; it 
 was already dusk, and he saw the softened dim- 
 ness of her eyes. 
 
 They rode down together in the declining light 
 through the winding ways of the outlying 
 country into the town ; it was quite dark when 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 265 
 
 they reached the gates ; they had ridden fast and 
 spoken scarcely at all. 
 
 As he lifted her from Said in the gloom within 
 the scarcely lighted street, he pressed her softly 
 for one second in his arms, so that she felt the 
 beating of his heart. 
 
 " A rive derci ! " he murmured. 
 
 She left him in silence, and without rebuke. 
 
 " Is that you, Duca ? " said the voice of 
 Madame Mila in the darkness, as a carriage, 
 gorgeous with amber and gold liveries and with 
 Carnival camellias at the horses' heads, pulled 
 up with great noise and haste before the hotel 
 door. 
 
 " Is that you, Duca ? I am so glad ; I wanted 
 to speak to you. The Corso was horridly stupid. 
 I don't care a bit except for the pelting days, do 
 you. I sprained my arm last year in Home with 
 the pelting, and I really blinded poor Salvareo 
 for a week. Why, dear me, that's Said ! Have 
 you and Hilda been riding together ? " 
 
 " I met your cousin, Madame, by chance ; she 
 had lost her way. It is very easy to do so 
 amongst our hills.'* 
 
266 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " How very fortunate that you met her ! " said 
 Madame Mila, with a little saucy laugh. " She 
 will kill herself riding that horrid Said some day 
 perhaps she will listen to you if you tell her 
 not. What was it I wanted to say, oh, I want a 
 very good box for the Veglione. You are one of 
 the directors of the opera, are you not ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I thought so. Well, mind I have one ; big 
 enough to hold the supper table comfortably ; 
 and see Maurice about it, and dine with me to- 
 morrow, will you? Nina and Olga and the 
 usual people. Dear me, how these horses do 
 fidget. How very nice that you should have 
 met dear Hilda just when she 'd lost her way ! 
 Good bye ; but, of course, you '11 be at the 
 Roubleskoffs' to-night? I wish it wasn't cos- 
 tume. I'm England, and I'm embroidered all 
 over with Union Jacks ; and I have a little 
 Khedive on a gold stick that keeps tumbling up 
 and down ; and I carry a ship in full sail on the 
 top of my head. I assure you it's very trying to 
 be a Naval Power. How ever I shall be able to 
 waltz with that ship ! " 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 267 
 
 Delia Rocca rode away in the darkness, as the 
 skirts of Madame Mila vanished in the hotel 
 doorway with the gleam of the golden-pheasant 
 trimmings shining under the gas lamp. 
 
 He went home to his solitary dinner, and 
 scarcely touched it, and barely even noticed his 
 dog. He sat alone a long time, thinking, in the 
 same room where, four months before, he had 
 pondered on the Due de St. Louis's counsels, and 
 had decided to himself that this woman, beautiful \ 
 though she was, was arrogant, unimpressionable, 
 extravagantly capricious, and in every way anta- 
 gonistic to him. 
 
 Now, he was passionately in love with her 
 himself ; he knew that she was deeply moved by 
 him ; he believed that he had only to ask and 
 have ; and yet he hesitated. 
 
 It was the marriage of all other marriages for 
 him ; he had softened and subdued her in a 
 manner which could not but intoxicate his vanity, 
 though he had less vanity than most men ; he 
 did not distrust her character, because he believed 
 that there was a vague lofty nobility in it, and a 
 latent, though untouched, tenderness ; of her 
 
268 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 caprices, of her changefulness, of her moods of 
 contempt, and of impatience, he had no fear; he 
 would substitute other emotions for them. And 
 yet he hesitated ; he was unresolved ; he was 
 doubtful whether to accept the empire he had 
 obtained. 
 
 He would have concluded a marriage of interest 
 as coldly and tranquilly as any other man with a 
 woman to whom he was indifferent. But with 
 this woman whose mere touch thrilled him to the 
 heart, and whose imperious eyes had only grown 
 gentle for his sake ! never had he felt his 
 poverty so painfully as in this moment when 
 supreme Fortune seemed to have smiled upon 
 him. 
 
 Though he loved her with passion, he almost 
 wished that he had never seen her face. 
 
 After all, though generous, she was arrogant ; 
 sooner or later she might make him feel that the 
 golden sceptre was hers and not his. To his 
 temper, which, although gentle, was deeply in- 
 grained with the pride which had been transmitted 
 to him from many generations of a feudal nobility, 
 puch a possibility seemed unendurable. He sat 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 269 
 
 still lost in thought till his lamp grew low, and 
 the wind rising loud, shook the leaded panes of 
 the old high windows. 
 
 "I suppose when Fortune does smile at us, 
 we always quarrel with her so," he thought, with 
 some impatience of his own irresolution. 
 
 After all, what other man in Europe would not 
 have been content ? 
 
 He got up, caressed the dog, turned the lamp 
 higher, and went into his bed-chamber. 
 
 " Get out the white mousquetaire dress/ 1 he 
 said to his old servant. " I will go to the Roubles- 
 koff ball." 
 
 All patrician Floralia was at the Roubleskoff 
 ball, one of the last great entertainments of the 
 expiring Carnival. In six more days there would 
 come the Day of Ashes ; and Floralia would repent 
 her sins in sadness, that is, with only musical 
 parties, a dinner here and there, and no suppers 
 at all; (perhaps a ball might be squeezed in 
 once or twice by grace of the Russian Calendar, 
 but, then, if you took advantage of that you were 
 brouille with all the codini at once). 
 
 He reached the Roubleskoff villa late, not so 
 
270 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 late but what he was in time to see the arrival of 
 the woman who had sat with him at her feet, and 
 talked with him of Meleager and the white nar- 
 cissus flowers. 
 
 Lady Hilda entered like a sovereign, and drew 
 all eyes on herself. 
 
 She was attired as Vittoria Colonna, and 
 carried her purples and cloth of gold with more 
 than royal grace ; the colour on her cheek was 
 heightened, her eyes had a dewy brilliancy ; 
 what they spoke to her she seemed hardly to 
 hear. 
 
 He was as her shadow all the evening. 
 
 They were both feverishly happy ; both curi- 
 ously troubled. Neither cared to look onward. 
 
 Society there assembled said that it was a 
 great thing for the Duca della Rocca ; and won- 
 dered whether they would live most in Floralia 
 or Paris. 
 
 " C'est moi qui a inspire cela," said the Due de 
 St. Louis, with much self-complacency, sitting 
 down to the whist table ; he was quite sure that 
 all was right ; he had seen the look in the eye' 
 of both of them. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 271 
 
 "She will compromise herself at last. Oh,, 
 what a comfort it will be ! " thought little 
 Madame Mila, carrying her frigate in full sail 
 airily through the mazes of the cotillon, with a 
 sleeveless bodice on, cut so low that it was really 
 as good or as bad as if she had had nothing 
 at all. She did not wish any harm, of course, 
 only, really, Hilda, with a lover like other 
 people, would be so much more natural and 
 agreeable. 
 
 "But they will marry, people say,'* suggested 
 M. des Gommeux, to whom alone she confided 
 these ideas. 
 
 "When do people ever say anything that is 
 true ? " said Madame Mila, with profound con- 
 tempt, tossing her little head till the Naval Power 
 of England was in jeopardy. She was irritated to 
 hear Maurice even talk about marriage ; it was 
 an improper thing for him even to mention, con- 
 sidering his relation to herself. When he 
 approached any young girl or marriageable 
 woman of any sort, Madame Mila bristled like 
 a little angry terrier tiiat sees a cat; on the 
 whole, she was still more exacting than Miles. 
 
272 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Rose The and Boulotte, and whereas in society 
 he could escape from them, he could in nowise 
 escape from her. 
 
 If it had been a question of marriage for her 
 cousin, indeed, Madame Mila would have opposed 
 it tooth and nail ; she had a feeling, a very 
 accurate one, that Delia Rocca did not approve of 
 herself, and that he would certainly never allow 
 his wife, if he had one, to be very intimate 
 with her. But Madame Mila knew what other 
 people did not ; that there could be no question 
 of such a marriage for her cousin ; and so she 
 smiled on Delia Kocca, and was always engaging 
 him to dinner; because Lady Hilda, with her 
 laver about her, like any one else, would be so 
 much more humanized and natural, and would 
 sympathise so much better with other people. 
 
 That kind of virtue of Hilda's if it were 
 virtue was such an odd, chilly, unpleasant thing, 
 she thought ; to live in that way, with hundreds 
 of men seeking her, and cold alike to them all, 
 was something so very unnatural ; it was almost 
 as bad as being one of those queer women who 
 wouldn't tie their skirts back, or wear high heels, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 273 
 
 or dress their hair properly : it was so strange, 
 too, in a person who, in all other matters, was 
 the very queen of fashion, the very head and 
 front of the most perfect worldliness. 
 
 It was very late and daylight quite when Lady 
 Hilda, contrary to her custom, left the ball ; she 
 had been happy with a warmth and feverishnesa 
 of happiness altogether new to her ; nothing 
 more had passed between them, but they had 
 been together all the night, although never 
 alone. 
 
 She stood a moment in the doorway facing 
 the daylight. Most women are ruined by such a 
 test; she looked but the fairer for it, with the 
 sunrise flush touching her cheeks, and the pearls 
 and the diamonds in her hair. 
 
 " I may come to you early," he murmured, as 
 she paused that instant on the step. 
 
 "Yes no. No: I shall be tired. Wait till 
 the evening. You are coming to Mila." 
 
 The words were a denial ; but on her lips t f iere 
 was sweetness, and in her eyes a soft emotion sus 
 Bhe moved onward and downward to the carriage. 
 
 He was not dissatisfied nor dismayed. As 
 
274 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 he drew the furs over her gold-laden skirts, his 
 head bore lower and lower, and his lips touched 
 her hand and her arm. 
 
 " The sun is up. I never am so late as this," 
 she said, as though she did not feel those kisses ; 
 but, by the clear light of the day-dawn, he saw 
 the blood mantle over her throat and bosom, and 
 the tremulous shadow of a smile move her mouth. 
 
 The horses sprang forward ; he stood on the 
 lower step, grave and lost in thought. 
 
 "Is it too early to offer felicitations, my friend ? " 
 said the Due de St. Louis, passing to go home- 
 ward ; he had been playing whist all night. 
 
 " I do not understand you," he answered, with 
 the tranquil falsehood of society. 
 
 The question annoyed him deeply. He loved 
 this woman with all the tenderness and passion 
 of his temperament, and loved her the more for 
 the ascendency he had gained over her and the 
 faults that he saw in her ; he loved her generously, 
 truly, and with purer desire than most men. 
 Yet what would his love for her ever look to the 
 world ? since he was poor. 
 
 Meanwhile she, with her fair hair tumbled 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 275 
 
 about her pillows, and her gorgeous cloth of 
 gold lying on a couch like a queen's robes 
 abandoned, slept restlessly, yet with a smile 
 on her face, some few hours : when she awoke 
 it was with a smile, and with that, vague sweet 
 sense of awakening to some great joy, which 
 is one of the most precious gifts of happiness ; 
 dreamful misty sense of expectation and recol- 
 lections blending in one, and making the light 
 of day beautiful. 
 
 She lay still some time, awake, and yet 
 dreaming, with half-closed eyelids and her thick 
 hair loosened and covering her shoulders, and 
 the sweet scent close at hand of a glassful of 
 myrtle and calycanthus, that she had been very 
 careful to tell them to set near her bed. Lazily, 
 after awhile, she rang a little bell, and bade her 
 maids open her shutters, the grand light of the 
 noonday poured into the chamber. 
 
 " Give me a mirror," she said to them. 
 
 When they gave her one, she looked at herself 
 and smiled again : she was one of those women 
 who are lovely when they wake : there are not 
 many, 
 
 T 2 
 
276 IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 They brought her her chocolate, and she sipped 
 a little of it, and lay still, looking at the myrtle 
 and hearing the ringing of church bells from 
 across the water ; she was happy ; it seemed to 
 her that all her life before had not been happiness 
 after all ; only pleasure. 
 
 An hour later her maid brought her a telegram. 
 She opened it with a little impatience. Why 
 should anything break in on her day dream ? 
 
 It merely said that her brother was in Paris, 
 and would come onward ; and be with her that 
 night. She let the papers fall, as though she 
 were stung by an adder. 
 
 It recalled to her what she Lad forgotten* 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 LORD CLATRVAUX arrived in time for Madame 
 Mila's dinner. He was an affectionate and sunny- 
 tempered man ; lie did not notice that his sister 
 did not once say she was glad to see him. 
 
 Delia Rocca did notice it, with that delicate 
 unerring Italian perception, which is as fine as a 
 needle and as subtle as mercury. 
 
 He saw, too, that something had come over 
 her ; some cloud ; some change ; she had lost 
 much of her proud serenity, and she looked at 
 him now and then with what seemed to him 
 almost like contrition ; she avoided being alone 
 with him ; he was troubled at it, but not alarmed ; 
 he knew very well that she loved him. He let 
 her be. 
 
78 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 An Italian has infinite passion, but he has 
 also infinite patience in matters of love. Nor 
 was he, now that he was assured of his power 
 over her, wholly content to use it ; if he mar- 
 ried her, the world would always say that it was 
 for her wealth. That means of raising his own 
 fortunes which had seemed to him so material 
 and legitimate all his life, now seemed to him 
 unworthy and unmanly since he had grown to 
 care for her. He knew that such riches as she 
 possessed were precisely those wiih which he 
 had always intended to rebuild the fallen great- 
 ness of his race ; but since he had loved her it 
 looked very different. 
 
 The charm of their intercourse to him was the 
 ascendency he had won over her, the power that 
 he had gained to lift her nature to a higher level : 
 where would his influence be when he had once 
 stooped to enrich himself by its means ? 
 
 These fancies saddened him and checked 
 him, and made him not unwilling to linger on 
 about her, in all that indistinct sweetness of half- 
 recognised and half-unspoken love. 
 
 The position, uncertain as it was, had its 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 279 
 
 charm ; he felt that this woman, with all her 
 insolence and indifference and absorption by the 
 world, was, in his hands, only a creature of 
 emotions and of passions, who would flush at his 
 touch, and grow unnerved under his gaze; he 
 knew that he was very dear to her since, had he 
 not been, for the audacity of his caresses he 
 would have been driven out of her presence. 
 
 " Ama chi t 'ama, e lascia dir la gente," he 
 said to himself in the wise burden of the people's 
 love-song ; and he let destiny go as it would. 
 
 Meanwhile, she, dissatisfied, with a conscience 
 ill at ease, and disinclined to look into the future, 
 saw him morning, noon, and night, but avoided 
 seeing him alone, and usually had her brother 
 near. 
 
 Lord Clairvaux could only stay a week, and 
 was utterly unconscious that his presence was 
 unwelcome ; he was taken to see the two Arab 
 mares of Delia Rocca; he was taken to Pales trina; 
 he was taken to studios and chapels, which had 
 no more interest for him than they would have 
 had for a setter dog : but he was quite ignorant of 
 why he was taken. 
 
280 IN A WIXTER CITY. 
 
 He did what Lady Hilda told him to do ; he 
 always did when he and she were together ; 
 he was a simple, kindly, honest gentleman, 
 who regarded England as the universe, and all 
 the rest of the world as a mere accident. 
 His sister's contempt for her country and his 
 politics, her philosophy of indifferentism, her 
 adoration of primitive art, her variable disdain, 
 and her intellectual pharisaism had always seemed 
 to him very wonderful, and not altogether com- 
 fortahle ; but he admired her in a hopeless kind 
 of way, and it was not in his temper to puzzle 
 over people's differences of opinion or character. 
 
 " Hilda thinks all the old dead fellows were 
 gods, and she thinks all of us asses," he would 
 say humbly. "I don't know, you know, she's 
 awfully clever. I never was. It may be so, 
 only I never will believe that England is used 
 up, as she says ; and I like the east wind myself; 
 and what she can see in those saints she's 
 just bought, painted on their tiptoes, or in those 
 old crooked pots; but if she'd stayed in the 
 country, and hunted twice a week all winter, you 
 know she would not have been like thak" 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 281 
 
 " It would have been a great pity had Miladi 
 been anything save what she is," said Delia 
 Kocca, to whom he expressed himself in this 
 manner, in such French as he could command, 
 and who was amused and astonished by him, 
 and who took him a day's wild fowl shooting in 
 the marshes, and a day's wild boar hunting in 
 the next province, and wondered constantly 
 why so kindly and gallant a gentleman should 
 have been made by the good God so very 
 stupid. 
 
 " Oh, you think so ; I don't," said Lord 
 Clairvaux. " Hilda isn't my idea of a happy 
 woman. I don't believe she is happy. She 
 spends half her life thinking how she will dress 
 herself; and why will they dress now like the 
 ruffs and things of Queen Elizabeth, and the 
 effigies on the tombstones? and the other half 
 she spends buying things she never looks at, 
 and ordering things she dislikes when they're 
 done, and reading books that make her think 
 her own countrymen are a mere lot of block- 
 heads and barbarians. Not that I pretend to 
 understand her ; I never did ; only I think if 
 
288 IN A WINTEA CITY. 
 
 she didn't think everybody else such a fool she'd 
 be more comfortable." 
 
 Delia Rocca smiled. 
 
 " Pardon me, you will disturb the birds." 
 
 Lord Clairvaux recollected that he ought not 
 to talk of his sister to a stranger, and, bringing 
 his gun to his shoulder, fired into a covey of wild 
 ducks. 
 
 "What a handsome fellow that is, like an old 
 picture," he thought to himself, as he looked at 
 Delia Eocca, who sat in the prow of the boat ; 
 but he did not connect him in his thoughts with 
 Lady Hilda in any way : for ten years he had 
 got so tired of vainly wondering why this man 
 and that did not please her, and had been made 
 so vexed and perplexed by her rejection of the 
 Prince of DeutscLland, that he had ceased to 
 think of her as a woman who could possibly 
 ever care for anybody. 
 
 One night, however, when he had been there 
 five days, he was walked about in the crowd of 
 the Veglione by little Madame Mila, masked, and 
 draped as black as a little beetle ; and Madame 
 Mila, who was getting tired of things standing 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 283 
 
 still, and could no more help putting her tiny 
 finger into all kinds of pasties, and making mis- 
 chief in a kittenish way, than she could help 
 going on enamelling since she had once begun it, 
 laughed at him, teazed him, and told him, what 
 startled him. 
 
 " But she isn't here, and he is ! " he gasped 
 feebly, in protest at what he had heard, gazing 
 over the motley crowd. 
 
 " What a goose you are ; as if that showed 
 anything ! They can meet much better than in 
 this place," said Madame Mila, with a saucy 
 laugh. 
 
 He turned on her with a heavy frown. 
 
 " Hang it, Mila ! you don't dare to mean " 
 
 Madame Mila was frightened in an instant. 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ; of course not ; only I do assure 
 you they've been always together ever since I've 
 been in Floralia. I thought you knew " 
 
 " Damn it, no ! " he muttered. " I beg your 
 pardon, I never see anything ; I mean, I'm quite 
 sure there's nothing to see." 
 
 " Well, ask her," said Madame Mila : then she 
 added sweetly, " you know I'm so fond of dear 
 
284 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Hilda ; and people do talk so horridly here for 
 nothing at all; and Italians are not so scru- 
 pulous as we are." 
 
 He went home in haste, and was told that 
 Miladi had retired to hed full two hours before. 
 In the morning he sent to ask when he could see 
 her. She sent back word that she should be 
 happy to see him at breakfast at twelve. At ten 
 he received a telegram from his wife asking him 
 to return, because his eldest boy, Cheviot, was 
 unwell, and they feared typhoid fever. 
 
 " Damn it all, what a worry ! " said Lord 
 Clairvaux to himself, and then went out and 
 smoked on the bank of the river, and looked 
 over the stone parapet moodily. 
 
 " Bon-jour, monsieur," a voice said, passing 
 him. 
 
 Delia Kocca was driving past with a fiery 
 little horse on his way to Palestrina. Lord 
 Clairvaux felt inclined to stop the horse; but 
 what could he say if he did ? 
 
 What a nuisance it was, he thought ; but 
 what could go right in a country where they shot 
 their foxes, and called their brushes tails, and 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 285 
 
 hung them under the ears of cart-mules and 
 ponies ? a country where they treated the foxes 
 as they did, to say nothing of the Holy Father, 
 must be a land of malediction. 
 
 He smoked through two great cigars, and 
 walked about the town unhappily, and when it 
 was noon went upstairs to his sister. He did 
 not dare to go a moment before the time. 
 
 " Dear Freddie, is it you ? " said the Lady 
 Hilda, listlessly; she looked very lovely and 
 very languid, in a white cashmere morning 
 gown, with a quantity of lace about it, and her 
 hair all thrown back loosely, and tied like the 
 Venere alia Spina's. 
 
 " I have to go away by the night train. Poor 
 little Cheviot's ill," he said disconsolately, as he 
 took her hand ; he never ventured on kissing her; 
 years before she had taught him that such en- 
 dearments were very ridiculous and disagree- 
 able. 
 
 " Dear me, I am very sorry. Will you have 
 coffee, or tea, or wine ? " she asked absently, as 
 she went to the table where the breakfast was. 
 
 " Chevy's ^ery ill," said Lord Clairvaux, 
 
TN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 who thought she showed small sympathy. " You 
 used to like Chevy." 
 
 " He was a pretty little child. I hate hoys." 
 
 " You wouldn't if you had them of your own," 
 eaid Lord Clairvaux, and grumbled inaudibly as 
 he took some cutlets. 
 
 Lady Hilda coloured a little. 
 
 " I have really not imagination enough to 
 follow you : will you have coffee ? I hope it's 
 nothing serious with Cheviot ? " 
 
 " Fever, his mother thinks ; any way I must 
 go. I saw your friend the Duca della Rocca 
 this morning : he was out early." 
 
 He thought this was approaching the subject 
 in a masterly manner. 
 
 " Italians always rise early/' said the Lady 
 Hilda, giving him his cup. 
 
 " And he was at the Veglione last night" 
 
 " All Italians go to the Veglione." 
 
 " You have seen a great deal of him, haven't 
 you ? " asked Lord Clairvaux, looking at her 
 across the table, and thinking how pretty all that 
 white was which she had on, and what a difficult 
 person she was to begin anything with; he ban 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 287 
 
 never felt so nervous since the time when he had 
 once been called on to move the Address when 
 Parliament opened. 
 
 " One sees a great deal of everybody in a 
 small society like this." 
 
 " Because you know people talk about you 
 and him, so they say at least." 
 
 " They are very good, whoever they are : who 
 are they ? " 
 
 " Who ? Oh, I don't know; I heard so." 
 
 " How very nice of you to discuss rae with 
 other people ! " 
 
 Lord Clairvaux cast a glance at her and was 
 very much frightened at the offence he saw in 
 her contemptuous face : how pale she was looking 
 too, now he thought of it, and she had shadows 
 underneath her eyes quite new to her. 
 
 " What sort of a fellow is he?" he muttered. 
 He seemed a duffer to me about his fields such 
 ploughs, by heavens ! and such waste in the 
 stackyards I never saw. But it isn't farming 
 here at all; it's letting things go wild just 
 anyhow " 
 
 " It is not being wiser than Nature, and sacri- 
 
288 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 ficing all loveliness to greed if you mean that," 
 said Lady Hilda, with coldest disdain. " The 
 life here has still the old Theocritan idyllic 
 beauty, thank heaven." 
 
 " Theocritus ? Oh, I know ; I never could 
 construe him ; but I do know a straight furrow 
 and decently kept land when I see it. But I 
 say, you know, I don't want to be officious or 
 anything ; but do you think it's wise to see so 
 very much of him ? You know he's an Italian, 
 and I dare say hasn't a bit of principle, nor a 
 penny in his pocket." 
 
 The hazel eyes of the Lady Hilda flashed 
 golden beams of wrath. 
 
 " How very grateful of you ! when he has 
 entertained you to the best of his ability, and 
 went out of his way to find sport for you, very 
 little to his own pleasure, moreover, for I can 
 assure you his soul does not lie in his gun- 
 barrel!" 
 
 " I don't want to say anything against him," 
 murmured Lord Clairvaux, who was the most 
 grateful and most just of mortals. " He was 
 very kind and courteous, and all that and I 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 28& 
 
 don't say he's a bad shot, though he's a bad 
 farmer and he is an awfully good-looking fellow, 
 like an old picture, and all that. Only I must 
 go to-night, Hilda, and I do want to speak to 
 you." 
 
 " You are speaking all this time I believe," 
 said Lady Hilda icily, looking across at him 
 with the coldest challenge in her darkening 
 eyes. 
 
 " I never could think why you didn't take 
 Deutschland," he muttered, reverting to an old 
 grievance. 
 
 " He didn't please me. Is that all you wanted 
 to say?" 
 
 "But I thought you'd have cared to be a 
 reigning sovereign ? " 
 
 "Of a small State?" said the Lady Hilda, 
 with an eloquent lift of her eyebrows. 
 
 " Well, there was De Eibeaupierre ; he was 
 everything anybody could want ; Vienna, too ; I 
 used to think an Ambassadress's life would just 
 suit you." 
 
 " Always calling on people and writing no tea ? 
 No life on earth more tiresoir<j." 
 
 v 
 
290 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " I suppose you want to be an Empress ? " 
 
 " Oh dear no," answered his sister. " I have 
 known two Empresses intimately ; and it is a 
 career of great tedium : you can never do what 
 you like." 
 
 "Then, I suppose, you are content as you 
 are?' 
 
 " I suppose so, if anybody ever is. I don't 
 
 think anyone is. I never met anybody who was. 
 
 They say pigs are ; but one sees so little of pigs 
 
 hat one can't make much psychological study of 
 
 them." 
 
 Lord Clairvaux grumbled, sighed, and took 
 his courage d deux mains. 
 
 " Well, never mind the other men ; they 
 are past and gone, poor wretches ; what do you 
 mean to do about this one ? " 
 
 "This what?" said Lady Hilda, looking 
 languidly at him through the flowers on the 
 breakfast table. She knew quite well what he 
 meant. 
 
 "What do you mean to do with him?" re- 
 peated Lord Clairvaux solemnly, pushing his 
 plate away. "It's all very pretty, I daresay. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 291 
 
 Komeo and moonlight and poetry and all that 
 sort of thing ; Italians are the deuce and all 
 for that, only I shouldn't have thought you'd 
 have cared for it ; and besides, you know it can't 
 go on : the man's a gentleman, that I grant ; 
 and, by heaven, that's a great deal now-a-days, 
 such blackguards as we're getting, three card 
 scandals in the club already this very winter, and 
 George Orme's was regular sharping, just what 
 any cad might do, by Jove ! But you know you 
 can't go on with it ; you can't possibly mean it 
 seriously, now, do you ? " 
 
 Lady Hilda laughed that little cold, con- 
 temptuous laughter which her brother always 
 shivered under, and which Delia Bocca had 
 never heard. 
 
 " I don't seriously mean to cheat at cards ! My 
 dear Frederic, you must say what you mean, if 
 you mean anything at all, a little more clearly, 
 please. Why will all Englishmen get their talk 
 into such odd confusion ? I suppose it comes of 
 never learning grammar at Eton." 
 
 " Well, hang it then, I'll say it clearly," re- 
 torted Clairvaux, with some indignation. " Mila 
 
 u 2 
 
292 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 tells me you and this Italian that's always after 
 you, have taken a liking to one another : is it 
 true ? and what do you mean to do with him ? 
 There ! " 
 
 He was horrihly frightened when he had said 
 it, but what he thought was his duty, that he 
 did: and he conceived it to be his duty to 
 speak. 
 
 All the blood leapt into the fair face of the 
 Lady Hilda, her nostrils dilated in a fine anger, 
 her lips grew pale. 
 
 " Mila is a little wretch ! " she said, with strong 
 passion ; then was still ; she was too generous to 
 quote her own generosity, or urge her past gifts 
 as present claims. " She is a little fool ! " she 
 added, with bitter disdain ; " and how can you, 
 cheapen my name by listening to her chattering 
 folly ? Besides, what have you to do with me 
 or what has she ? I am not used to dictation 
 nor to interference ! " 
 
 " Oh, I know," said her brother, humbly. 
 ' And I beg your pardon, you are sure, and aU 
 that ; only, just tell me, how will it end ? " 
 
 " How will what end ? " 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 293 
 
 ir^j - - ..-....- . . - -_ ^j-mt ar^ M 
 
 " This fancy of yours." 
 
 Lady Hilda grew very pale. 
 
 " My dear Clairvaux," she said, with chilliest 
 contempt, "you are not my keeper, nor my 
 husband, nor anything else, except one of my 
 trustees. I do not know that being a trustee 
 gives you a title to be impertinent. You really 
 talk as yoK might to your gamekeeper's daughter, 
 if you thought you saw the girl ' going wrong.' 
 What M. Delia Bocca feels for me is merely 
 sympathy in ideas and tastes. But if it were 
 anything else, whose business would it be ? " 
 
 Lord Clairvaux laughed. 
 
 "Yes! you are a likely creature to inspire 
 friendship ! As if there were ever a woman worth 
 looking at who could keep a man at that ! 
 don't let us fence about it, Hilda. Perhaps f 
 haven't any right to say anything. You're your 
 own mistress and all that, and answerable to 
 nobody. Only, can you deny that I am your 
 brother ? " 
 
 " I have always understood you were ! I con- 
 fess you make me regret the circumstance." 
 
 " Now that's ill-natured, very ill-natured," he 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 murmured pathetically. "But you won't make 
 me quarrel. There must be two to quarrel, and 
 I won't be one. We have always been good 
 friends, more than good friends. I thought I 
 was the only person on earth you did like - " 
 
 " And, like everyone else, you consider that the 
 liking you inspire confers a privilege to be im- 
 pertinent," said his sister, with all that disdain- 
 ful anger flashing from her languid eyea, which 
 none of her family ever cared very much to meet. 
 
 She had risen from her chair, and was moving 
 to and fro with a restless, controlled impatience. 
 She remained very pale. Clairvaux kept his 
 position on the hearth-rug, with a dogged good 
 humour, and an uneasy confusion blended to- 
 gether which, at any other time, would have 
 diverted her. 
 
 "Perhaps I may be impertinent," he said, 
 humbly, "though, hang me, if I can see that 
 that's a natural sort of word to be used between 
 a brother and sister. I know you're a mighty 
 great lady, and * a law to yourself/ as some poet 
 says ; and never listen to anybody, and always 
 go your own ways, and all that, but still, if you 
 
IN A WINTER CITT. 295 
 
 never speak to me afterwards, I must say what 
 I want to say. This man is in love with you, 
 it's my belief you're in love with him Mila 
 says so, and she knows. Now, granted that it is 
 so (if it isn't there's nothing to be angry about), 
 what I say is, how do you mean it to end ? 
 Will you marry him ? " 
 
 Her face changed, flushed, and then grew pale 
 again. 
 
 " Of course not! You know it is impos- 
 sible ! " 
 
 " Does he know why it is impossible ? " 
 
 " No why should he ? Really you do not 
 know what you are talking about. You are 
 interfering, in the most uncalled-for manner, 
 where there is not the slightest necessity for any 
 interference." 
 
 " Then you are letting him fall in love with 
 you in the dark, and when you have had enough 
 of the sport will throw him over ? " 
 
 "You grow very coarse, Olairvaux. Oblige 
 me by dropping the subject." 
 
 " I didn't know I was coarse. That is what 
 you are going to do. You accept all his court 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 fcow and then you'll turn round on him some 
 fine morning and say you've had enough of it. 
 At least, I can't see what else you will do since 
 you cannot marry him. You'll hardly lower 
 yourself to Mila's level and all the other women's 
 hy heavens, if I thought you would, if I 
 thought you had done, I'd soon see if this fellow 
 were as fine a swordsman as they say ! " 
 
 Lady Hilda turned her face full on him. 
 
 " So my brother is the first person that ever 
 dared to insult me ? " she said, with utmost 
 coldness, as she rose from the breakfast table 
 and swept his feet in passing with the lace 
 that fringed the hem of her cashmere robes. 
 
 She gave him one parting look, and lert the 
 chamber. 
 
 He stood cowed by the golden fire of those 
 superb imperious hazel eyes. He was nervous 
 at what he had done, and unhappy and per- 
 plexed. He stood alone, pulling at his fair 
 beard, in troubled repentance. He knew what 
 her wrath would be. She was not a woman who 
 quickly forgave. 
 
 " I've blundered ; I always do blunder," he 
 
IN A WINTER C1TT. 297 
 
 thought sadly to himself. " She must care 
 awfully about him to be so angry." 
 
 He waited all alone many minutes; he was 
 sincerely sorry ; perhaps he had been coarse ; he 
 had not meant to be ; only, the idea of her talked 
 about, and with lovers ! -just like all those other 
 women whom their husbands or brothers ought 
 to strangle it was only fashion, they said, only 
 the way of the world, all that immorality; 
 " Damn the world," he said to himself, ruffling 
 his beard in sad bewilderment. 
 
 He scribbled a trite, rough, penitent note, and 
 sent it to her by her maid. They brought him a 
 closed envelope : when he opened it he found 
 only his own note inside sent back without any 
 word. 
 
 Honest Clairvaux's eyes filled with tears. 
 
 " She'll never see me again before I. go to- 
 night," he thought to himself, tossing his poor 
 little rejected morsel into the woud fire. " And 
 I must go to-night, because of poor little Chevy. 
 How horrid it is ! I couldn't be angry like that 
 with her ! " 
 
 He stood some moments more, knitting his 
 
298 IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 fair, frank forehead, and wishing that he were 
 less stupid in managing things ; he had never in 
 his life before presumed to condemn and counsel 
 his sister and this was the result ! 
 
 Suddenly an idea struck him, and he rose. 
 
 "I will teU him," he thought. " I will tell 
 him himself. And then I shall see what sort of 
 stuff he is made of ; I can fight him afterwards 
 if he don't satisfy me ; I'll tell him as if I 
 suspected nothing I can make an excuse, but 
 when he hears it he'll show what he's made of; 
 oh, Lord, if it were only an Englishman she'd 
 taken a liking to ! and to think that she's 
 treated half the best men in Europe as if they 
 were only so many stones under her feet ! " 
 
 With a groan, Lord Clairvaux took up his 
 hat, and went forth towards the Palazzo Delia 
 Kocca. 
 
 At six o'clock that evening he had to take his 
 departure without seeing his sister again. He 
 went away with a heavy heart. 
 
 " How extraordinary she is ! " he thought. 
 " Never even to ask me if I told the man any- 
 thing or not. And never to bid one good-bye ! 
 
A WINTER CITY. 299 
 
 Well, I've done for the best I can't help it. 
 She'll be sorry if poor little Chevy should die." 
 
 But the boy did not die ; so that his father 
 never learned whether that event would have 
 touched the heart of Lady Hilda or not. 
 
 All the following day she shut herself up in 
 her rooms. She said she was ill ; and, in truth, 
 she felt so. Delia Eocca called three times in 
 the day, but she did not see him ; he sent up a 
 great bouquet of the pale yellow tea rose of 
 which she was so fond; he had fastened the 
 flowers together with an antique silver zone, on 
 which was the Greek Love in relief ; the Love 
 of the early Hellenic poets, without wings and 
 with a mighty sword, the Love of Anacreon, 
 which forges the soul as a smith his iron, and 
 steeps it in icy waters after many blows. 
 
 She understood the message of the Love, but 
 she sent no message back. 
 
 It was a lovely day ; underneath the windows 
 the carriages were rolling ; there was the smile 
 of spring on the air as the fleecy clouds went 
 sailing past ; she could see the golden reaches 
 of the river and the hyacinth-huod hills 
 
300 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 where Palestrina lay ; her heart was heavy ; her 
 pulse was quick; her conscience was ill at 
 ease ; her thoughts were restless and perturbed. 
 Solitude and reflection were so new to her ; they 
 appalled her. When she had been unwell before, 
 which had been but seldom, she had always 
 beguiled herself by looking over the jewels in 
 their cases, sorting rare old Marcantonios and 
 Morghens, skimming French feuilletons, or 
 planning new confections for her vast stores of 
 old laces. But now none of these distractions 
 were possible to her ; she sat doing nothing, 
 weary, feverish, and full of a passionate pain. 
 
 The fact which her brother had told to Delia 
 Kocca was that, if she married again, all her riches 
 would pass away from her. 
 
 At the time of her marriage her father had 
 been deeply involved in debt ; gambling, racing, 
 and debts of every other kind had been about 
 him like spiders' webs ; the great capitalist, 
 Vorarlberg, had freed him on condition of 
 receiving the hand of his young daughter in ex- 
 change. She was allowed to know nothing of 
 these matters ; but under such circumstances it 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 30J 
 
 was impossible for the family to be exacting 
 as regarded sentiments : she was abandoned en- 
 tirely to the old man's power. Fortunately for 
 herself, he was taken ill on the very day of the 
 nuptials, and, after a lingering period of suffering, 
 died, leaving her mistress of half of one of the 
 finest fortunes in Europe. By birth he was a 
 Wallachian Jew, brought up in London and Paris, 
 but he had been naturalised in England, when a 
 youth, for commercial objects, and the disposi- 
 tion of his property lay under his own control. 
 A year or two after his death a later will was 
 found by his lawyers, still leaving hr the same 
 income, but decreeing that in the event of her 
 second marriage everything should pass away 
 from her to the public charities, save alone her 
 jewels, her horses, all things she might have 
 purchased, the house in Paris, which had been 
 a gift, and some eight hundred a year already 
 secured to her. The new will was proved, and she 
 was informed that she could enjoy her fortune 
 only by this tenure. She was indifferent. She 
 was quite sure that she would never wish to 
 marry any one. She loved her wealth and spent 
 
302 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 it magnificently; and when men sought her whose 
 own position would have made the loss of her 
 own money of no moment, she still repulsed 
 them, thinking always " le mieux est 1'ennemi 
 du bien." 
 
 The fact of this later will was scarcely known 
 beyond the precincts of the law and the circle of 
 their own family ; but since she had met Delia 
 Ilocca, the remembrance of it had kept her awake 
 many a night, and broken roughly many a day- 
 dream. 
 
 To surrender her fortune to become his 
 wife never once occurred to her as possible ; 
 ten years' enjoyment of her every whim 
 had made it seem so inalienably hers. She had 
 entered so early into her great possessions, that 
 they had grown to be a very part of her. The 
 old man who had been her husband but in name 
 was but a mere ghostly shadow to her. The 
 Jreedom and the self-indulgence she had so long 
 enjoyed had become necessary to her as the air 
 she breathed. She could no more face the loss 
 of her fortune than she could have done that of 
 her beauty. It was not the mere vulgar vaunt 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 303 
 
 or ostentation of wealth that had attraction for 
 her; it was all the supremacy, the ease, the 
 patronage, the habits, that great wealth alone 
 makes possible ; it was the reign which she had 
 held throughout Europe ; it was the charm of 
 perfectly irresponsible power. To give up these 
 and hear the cackle of all the fools she had 
 eclipsed mocking at her weakness ! it would be 
 beyond all endurance. 
 
 What was she to do ? 
 
 The lax moralities of the women of her time 
 were impossible to her proud and loftier charac- 
 ter ; and besides, she felt that a woman who pre- 
 ferred the world to him, would not find in Delia 
 Rocca a forgiving or a submissive lover. When 
 he knew, what would he say ? 
 
 She turned sick at the thought. After all, she 
 had played with him and deceived him ; he would 
 Uave just cause of passionate reproach against 
 her. His love had no wings, but it had a sword. 
 
 " Will Miladi be able to dine ? " her maid 
 asked her, vaguely alarmed at the strange stillness 
 and the great paleness of her face. 
 
 "Was I to dine anywhere?" she said wearily, 
 
304 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 She was to dine at the Archduchess Anna's. 
 The Archduchess Anna was passing through 
 Floralia after three months at Palermo for health, 
 and was staying in strict incognita, and infinite 
 glee, as the Countess Von Feffers at the Hotel del 
 Re; enjoying herself endlessly, as the gay-hearted 
 lady that she was, even indulging once in the 
 supreme delight of driving in a cah, and with no 
 other recognition of her great rank than consisted 
 in the attendance upon her of the handsomest 
 of the king's chamberlains. 
 
 " Dress me, then," said Lady Hilda, with a 
 sigh. She co^ld not excuse herself to the 
 Archduchess, whom she had known intimately for 
 years, and who was to leave Floralia in a week. 
 
 " What gown does Madame select? " asked her 
 maid. 
 
 "Give me any you like," she answered. 
 
 She did not care how she would look; she 
 would not meet him ; she knew that he had no 
 acquaintance with the imperial lady. 
 
 The maids, left to themselves, gave her th 
 last new one 2rom Worth ; only six days arrived; 
 a dress entirely white, with knots of purple 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 305 
 
 velvet, exactly copied from a picture of 
 Boucher, and with all the grace of dead 
 Versailles in its folds. She put a rococo neck- 
 lace on, with a portrait of Maria Theresa in it, 
 and went listlessly to the dinner; she was not 
 thinking about her appearance that night, or she 
 would have said that she was too pale to wear all 
 that white. 
 
 " Goodness me, Hilda, how ill you do look," 
 said Madame Mila, meeting her on the stairs, 
 and who was going also. 
 
 " No, thanks, I won't drive with you ; two 
 women can't go in a carriage without one being 
 chiffonnee. That's an exquisite toilette ; that 
 white brocade is delicious stamped with the 
 lilies of France, very pretty; only you're too 
 pale for it to-night, and it's a pity to wear it only 
 for the Archduchess. She never knows what 
 anybody's got on their backs. Is anything the 
 matter, dear?" 
 
 "Nothing in the world." 
 
 " Then you must have got a headache ? You 
 certainly do look very ill. I do so hope we shall 
 get a\vay in time for the Veglione. It 's the very 
 
306 IN A WINTER CITS. 
 
 last night, you know. I had such fun last time. 
 I intrigue' } d heaps of people, and Doggendorff I 
 drove wild ; I told him everything about his wife 
 and Lelio Castelpucci, and all against himself 
 that she'd ever told me. It was such fun he'd 
 not an idea who I was, for when we were at 
 supper, he came running in breathless to tell us 
 of a horrible little mask with a voice like a 
 macaw's ; you know I'd put a pebble under my 
 tongue." 
 
 " Very dangerous pastime, and a very vulgar 
 one," said the Lady Hilda, descending the stair- 
 case. " How can you go down into that horrible 
 screeching mob, Mila ? It is so very low." 
 
 " My dear, I go anywhere to amuse myself, 
 and Maurice was always near me, you know, so if 
 
 I had been insulted There's eight o'clock 
 
 striking." 
 
 The Hotel del Re was but ten minutes' drive 
 along the famous river- street, which has such an 
 Arabian Nights-like beauty when the lamps are 
 lighted, and gleam in long lines adown each 
 shore, and mirror themselves in the water, whilst 
 dome, and bell-tower and palace-roof raise them- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 307 
 
 selves darkly against the steel-blue sky of the 
 ttight. 
 
 The Archduchess had been spending a long 
 day in the galleries, studying art under the 
 guidance of the handsome chamberlain ; she was 
 hungry, happy, and full of the heartiest spirits; 
 she was a very merry and good-natured person, 
 about five-and -forty years old, fat and fair, very 
 badly dressed, and very agreeable, with a frank 
 laugh, and a strong love of humour ; she had had 
 more escapades than any princess in Europe, and 
 smoked more cigars than a French newspaper 
 writer, and had married more daughters to 
 German cousins than anybody else in the 
 Almanac de Gotha. 
 
 Had she been any lesser being, Society would 
 have turned its back on her ; but, being who she 
 was, her nod was elevation, and her cigar-ash 
 honour, and, to do her justice, she was one of 
 the most amiable creatures in all creation. 
 
 "Ma chere, you are lovelier than ever! 
 and how do you like this place ? and is the dear 
 little pug alive ? I lost my sweet Zaliote of 
 asthma in Palermo," said the Archduchess, wel- 
 
 z 2 
 
308 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 coming the Lady Hilda, as she did everything 
 with ardour. 
 
 Lady Hilda, answering, felt her colourless 
 cheeks grow warm ; in the circle standing round 
 r$he recognised Delia Rocca. The Archduchess 
 had taken a fancy to the look of him in the street, 
 and had bade the chamberlain present him, and 
 then had told him to come to dinner : she liked 
 to surround herself with handsome men. From 
 Madame Mila he had learned in the morning that 
 her cousin would dine there at night. 
 
 Madame Mila concluded in her own mind that 
 Freddie had had a row with his sister upon the 
 matter, but that Delia Bocca had had nothing 
 said to him about it by either of them. Madame 
 Mila concluded also that Hilda had grown sen- 
 sible, and was doing like other women, though 
 why she looked so ill about it, Madame Mila could 
 not imagine. Madame Mila did not comprehend 
 scruples. 
 
 It was very painful, for instance, to be allied 
 to any one of the Greek Church, and a great 
 gnef to the Holy Father ; but still it was very 
 nice to be married to a Schismatic, because it 
 
IN A WINTER CITT. 309 
 
 enabled you to go to balls a fortnight longer : if 
 it was still your husband's carnival, you know f 
 nobody could say anything. 
 
 Madame Mila thought you should always do 
 your best to please everybody ; but then you 
 should take care that you pleased yourself first 
 most of all. The world was easy enough to 
 live in if you did not worry : there were always 
 unpaid bills to be sure, and they were odious. 
 But then Hilda never had any unpaid bills; 
 so she never could have anything to annoy 
 her. 
 
 Apropos of bills, she hoped Delia Rocca would 
 not use his influence with her cousin so as to 
 prevent her paying other people's bills. Of 
 course he wouldn't do this just at present; but 
 when men had been lovers a little while, she 
 reflected, they always turned the poetry into 
 prose, and grew very nearly as bad as husbands. 
 
 Madame Mila watched them narrowly all 
 through dinner. 
 
 " If I thought he'd make her stingy, I'd make 
 her jealous of Giulia Malatesta to-morrow," she 
 thought to herself. Madame Mila on occasion 
 
310 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 had helped or hindered circumstance amongst 
 her friends and enemies with many ingenious 
 little devices and lucky little anonymous notes, 
 and other innocent shifts and stratagems. It 
 was no use being in the world at all unless you 
 interfered with the way it went ; to he a mere 
 puppet in the hands of Fate, with the strings of 
 accident dangling to and fro, seemed to her 
 clever little brains quite unworthy the intelli- 
 gence of woman. 
 
 She never meant to do any harm, oh, never ; 
 only she liked things to go as she wished them. 
 "Who does not ? If a few men and women had 
 been made wretched for life, and people who 
 loved one another devotedly had been parted for 
 ever, and suspicion and hatred had crept into the 
 place of trust and tenderness in certain house- 
 holds, Madame Mila could not help that, any 
 more than one can help other people being 
 splashed with mud when one drives down a lane 
 in bad weather. And nobody ever thought 
 Madame Mila could do any harm ; pretty, good- 
 natured, loquacious, little Madame Mila, running 
 about with her little rosebuds at fancy fairs, and 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 311 
 
 aying so sweetly, " Pour nos pauvres pour 
 nos chers pauvres !" 
 
 " The best little woman in the world," as 
 everybody said, Madame Mila would kiss her 
 female enemies on both cheeks wherever she met 
 them; and when she had sent an anonymous 
 letter (for fun), always sent an invitation to dinner 
 just after it, to the same direction. 
 
 " I wish I knew how it is really between them," 
 she thought at the Archduchess's dinner-table, 
 divided between her natural desire to see her 
 cousin let fall that " white flower of a blameless 
 life," which stinks as garlic in the nostrils of 
 those who have it not, and her equally natural 
 apprehension that Paolo della Eocca as a lover 
 would not let his mistress pay other persons' 
 debts, and would also be sure to see all her 
 letters. 
 
 " She'll tell him everything about everybodjV 
 thought Madame Mila, uncomfortably; for Delia 
 Kocca had a look in his eyes of assured happi- 
 ness, which, to the astute experience of Madame 
 Mila, suggested volumes. 
 
 Meantime she was also harassed by an appre- 
 
312 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 hension that she would not be able to withdraw 
 in time for the Veglione, where Maurice, a baig- 
 noir, and a supper- table awaited her. If the Arch- 
 duchess should sit down to play of any sort hope 
 was over, escape would be impossible till daydawn; 
 and Madame Mila hated playing with the Arch- 
 duchess ; with such personages she was afraid to 
 cheat, and was obliged to pay. 
 
 With all the ingenuity, therefore, of which she 
 was mistress, she introduced the idea of the 
 Veglione into the mind of her hostess, and so 
 contrived to fascinate her with the idea, that the 
 Archduchess, who had gone in her time to five 
 hundred public masked balls, was as hotly ani- 
 mated into a desire to go to this one as though 
 she had been just let out of a convent at eighteen 
 years old. 
 
 Madame Mila delightedly placed her baignoir 
 at the disposition of her imperial highness, and 
 her imperial highness invited all her guests to 
 accompany her ; such invitations are not optional ; 
 and Lady Hilda, who hated noise as her horses 
 hated masks, was borne off by the mirthful, chat- 
 tering, and gay-hearted lady, who had no ob- 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. $13 
 
 jection to noise, and loved fun and riot like a 
 street boy. 
 
 Lady Hilda thought a Veglione, and a liking 
 for it, both beneath contempt; yet she was not 
 unwilling to avoid all chance of being alone with 
 Bella Eocca even for a moment. She knew 
 what he would say : his eyes had said it all the 
 evening a thousand times. 
 
 The Archduchess Anna and Madame Mila 
 were both in the very highest spirits ; they had 
 taken a good deal of champagne, as ladies will, 
 and had smoked a good deal and got thirsty, 
 and had more champagne with some seltzer water, 
 and the result was the highest of high spirits. 
 Nothing could be more appropriate to a Veglione ; 
 as no reasonable being could stay by choice in 
 one for an hour, it is strongly advisable that 
 reason should be a little dethroned by a very dry 
 wine before entering the dingy paradise. Of 
 course nobody ever sees great ladies ' the worse 
 for wine* ; they are only the better, as a Stilton 
 cheese is. 
 
 Happy and hilarious, shrouded and masked 
 beyond all possibility of identification, and ready 
 
314 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 for any adventure, the Archduchess Anna was no 
 sooner in the box than she was out of it, and 
 declared her intention of going down into the 
 crowd. Madame Mila, only too glad, went 
 with her, and some half-dozen men formed their 
 escort. Lady Hilda excused herself on the plea 
 of a headache, a plea not untrue, and alone with 
 the Due de St. Louis awaited the return of her 
 hostess. She had only put on her mask for 
 entry, and had now laid it beside her ; she threw 
 aside her domino, for the heat of the box was 
 stifling, and the whiteness of her dress shone as 
 lilies do at moonlight. She leaned her cheek on 
 her hand, and looked down on to the romping, 
 screaming, many-coloured throngs. 
 
 " You are not well to-night, Madame ? " said 
 the Due, with the affectionate solicitude that he 
 felt for all pretty women. 
 
 He was puzzled as to how her relations could 
 stand with Delia Rocca: the previous night he 
 had thought everything settled, but now he 
 did not feel quite so sure. 
 
 " The Archduchess is so noisy ; it always 
 gives me a headache to dine with her," said 
 
JJV A WINTER CITY. 315 
 
 Lady Hilda. " She is very good-natured ; but 
 her talking is ! " 
 
 " She is an admirable heavy dragoon man- 
 que," said the Due. " Most good-natured, as 
 you say, but trying to the tympanum and the 
 taste. So Clairvaux left last night ? " 
 
 " Yes : Cheviot was taken ill." 
 
 " I should have thought it was a racer taken 
 ill by the consternation he seemed to be in. I 
 saw him. for a moment only." 
 
 She was silent, watching the whirling of 
 the pierrots, harlequins, scaramouches and domi- 
 noes, who were shrieking and yelling in the 
 throng below. 
 
 " I think he liked his shooting with Paolo ?" 
 said the Due, at a hazard. 
 
 " He likes shooting anywhere." 
 
 " Certainly there is something wrong," thought 
 the Due, stooping a little to look at her brocaded 
 white lilies. " What an exquisite toilette ! is 
 one permitted to say so ? " 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! " said the Lady Hilda petu- 
 tantly. " The incessant talk about dress is so 
 tiresome and so vulgar; the women who want 
 
316 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 their costumes praised are women who have only 
 just begun to dress tolerably, and are still not 
 quite sure of the effects ! " 
 
 " You are right, as always,*' said the Due, 
 with a little bow and a little smile. " But 
 now and then perfection surprises us into in- 
 voluntary indiscretion. You must not be too 
 severe." 
 
 " Somebody should be severe," she said, con- 
 temptuously. " Society is a Battle of the Frogs, 
 for rivality in dress and debt." 
 
 The Due laughed. 
 
 " What do you know about it, Madame ? 
 You who are as above rivals as above debts ? 
 By the way, you told me you wanted some old 
 Pesaro vases. I found some yesterday at Bian- 
 gini's shop that might please you; they come 
 out of an old pharmacy in Verona ; perhaps the 
 very pharmacy of Borneo's apothecary ; and there 
 vre some fine old pots too " 
 
 " I am tired of buying things." 
 
 " The weariness of empire ! nothing new. 
 You must take to keeping hens and chickens, as 
 the Emperor John Yatices did. How does 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 317 
 
 Camille Odissot succeed with your ball-room 
 frescoes ? " 
 
 " I have no idea. Very ill, I dare say." 
 " Yes, it is a curious thing that we do not 
 succeed in fresco. The grace is gone out of it ; 
 modern painters have not the lightness of touch 
 necessary ; they are used to masses of colour, and 
 they use the palette knife as a mason the trowel. 
 The art too, like the literature of our time, 
 is all detail ; the grand suggestive vagueness of 
 the Greek drama and of the Umbrian frescoes 
 are lost to us under a crowd of elaborated trivia- 
 lities ; perhaps it is because art has ceased to be 
 spiritual or tragic, and is merely domestic or melo- 
 dramatic ; the Greeks knew neither domesticity 
 nor melodrama, and the early Italian painters 
 were imbued with a faith which, if not so virile 
 as the worship of the Phidian Zeus, yet absorbed 
 them and elevated them in a degree impossible 
 in the tawdry Sadduceeism of our own day. By 
 the way, when the weather is milder you must 
 go to Orvieto ; you have never been there, I 
 think ; it is the Prosodion of Signorelli. "What a 
 fine Pagan he was at heart! He admired masculine 
 
318 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 beauty like a Greek ; he must have been a sin- 
 gularly happy man few more happy " 
 
 The Due paused as the handle of the door 
 turned ; he was only talking because he saw that 
 she was too weary or too languid to talk herself; 
 the door opened, and Delia Rocca entered the 
 box again, having escaped from the Arch- 
 duchess. 
 
 "We were speaking of Orvieto ; you know 
 more of it than I do. I was telling Miladi that 
 she must go there about Easter time/' said the 
 Due, hunting for his crush hat beneath the 
 chair. " Take my seat, mon cher, for a mo- 
 ment ; I see Salvareo in the crowd, and I must 
 speak to him about her imperialissima's supper. 
 I shall be back in an instant." 
 
 He departed, with no intention of returning, 
 and was assailed in the corridor by a party of 
 masks, who bore him off gaily between them 
 down the staircase into the laughing, screaming, 
 and capering multitude. 
 
 Delia Bocca did not take his chair, but sank 
 into the seat behind her, while his hand closed 
 on hers. 
 
IZV A WINTER CITY. 319 
 
 "Will you not even look at me?" he mur- 
 mured. 
 
 She drew her hand away, and put her mask 
 on, slipping its elastic round her delicate 
 ears. 
 
 " How the crowd yells ! " she said, impa- 
 tiently. " Will the Archduchess stay there long, 
 do you think?" 
 
 With gentlest audacity and softest skill he had 
 slipped off the mask and had laid it behind him 
 before she had realised what he was doing ; his 
 hand had touched her as lightly as though a feather 
 brushed a rose. 
 
 She rose in amazed anger, and turned on him 
 coldly. 
 
 " M. Delia Rocca ! how dare you presume so 
 far ? Give me my mask at once " 
 
 "No," he said, softly; and he took hold of 
 her hands and drew her towards the back of the 
 box where no eyes could reach them, and knelt 
 down before her as she sat there in the dusky 
 shadow of the dark red draperies. 
 
 "Oh, my love my love!" he murmured; 
 that was all; but his arms stole about her, and 
 
320 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 his head drooped till his forehead rested on her 
 knees. 
 
 For the moment she did not repulse him 
 she did not stir nor speak ; she yielded herself 
 to the embrace, mute and very pale, and moved 
 to a strange tumult of emotion, whether of 
 anger or of gladness she barely knew. 
 
 He lifted his head, and his eyes looked into 
 hers till her own could look no longer. 
 
 " You love me ? " he whispered to her, whilst 
 his arms still held her imprisoned. 
 
 She was silent ; under the purple knot of 
 velvet at her breast, he saw her heart heave, her 
 breath come and go ; a hot colour flushed over 
 all her face, then faded, and left her again pale 
 as her white brocade. 
 
 " It were of no .use if if I did," she muttered. 
 " You forget yourself; leave me." 
 
 But he knelt there, looking at her till the 
 look seemed to burn her like flame ; yet she did 
 not rise : she, the very hem of whose garment 
 no man before him had ever dared to touch. 
 
 " You love me ! " he murmured, and said the 
 same thing again and again and again, in all 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 321 
 
 the various eloquence of passion. She trembled 
 a little under his close caress ; the dusky red of 
 the hox whirled around her; the shouting of 
 the multitude below beat ' like the sound of a 
 distant sea on her ears. 
 
 As he kneeled at her feet she touched his 
 forehead one moment with her hand in a gesture 
 of involuntary tenderness. 
 
 "It is of no use," she said, faintly again. 
 " You do not understand you do not know." 
 
 " Yes : I do know,'* he answered her. 
 
 " You know ! " 
 
 " Yes : your brother told me." 
 
 "And yet? " 
 
 " Since we love one another, is not that 
 enough ? " 
 
 She breathed like a person suffocated; she 
 loosened herself from his arms, and drew away 
 from him, and rose. 
 
 " It makes no change in you, then ! " she said, 
 wonderingly, and looked at him through a blind- 
 ing mist, and felt sick and weary and bewildered, 
 as she had never thought it possible to feel. 
 
 "Change in me? What change? save that 
 
 Y 
 
322 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 I am freer to seek you that is all. Oh, my 
 empress, my angel! is not love enough ? Has 
 your life without love contented you so well that 
 you fear to face love alone ? " 
 
 He still knelt at her feet and kissed her hands 
 and her dress, as he spoke ; he looked upward at 
 the pale beauty of her face. 
 
 She shivered a little as with cold. 
 
 " That is folly," she muttered. " You must 
 know it is of no use. I could not live poor." 
 
 The word stung him : he rose to his feet ; he 
 was silent. After all, what had he to offer her ? 
 he loved her that was all. 
 
 She loosened the loose chain ahout her 
 throat, and looked away beyond him at the 
 lights of the theatre. With an effort she re- 
 covered her old indifferent cold manner. 
 
 "You have forgotten yourself: it is all folly: 
 you must know that : you surprised me into 
 weakness for a moment. But it is over now. 
 Give me my mask, and take me to the carriage.'* 
 
 " No ! " He leaned against the door, and 
 
 looked down on her: all the rapture of ex- 
 pectancy and of triumph had faded from his 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 323 
 
 face ; the pallor and suffering of a great passion 
 were on it; lie had known that she loved the 
 things of the world; but he had believed that 
 she loved him more. 
 
 He was undeceived. He looked at this beau- 
 tiful woman with the gold chain loosed about her 
 throat, and the white brocaded lilies gleaming in 
 the gloom, and only by a supreme effort did he 
 subdue the bitterness and brutality which lie 
 underneath all strong passions. 
 
 " One moment ! " he said, as she moved to 
 reach the door. " Can you say you have no 
 love for me ? " 
 
 Her colour varied. 
 
 " What is the use ? Give me my mask." 
 
 "Can you say you do not love me ? " 
 
 She hesitated; she wished to lie and could 
 not. 
 
 " I did not say that,*' she murmured. " Per- 
 haps if things were different But, as it is 
 
 it is no use." 
 
 The half-confession sufficed, it loosened his 
 lips to passionate appeal ; with all the eloquence 
 natural to him and to his language, he poured 
 
 Y 2 
 
32 4 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 out on her all the supplication, all the entreaty, 
 all the persuasion, that he was master of; he 
 lavished every amorous endearment that his lan- 
 guage held; he painted the joys of great and 
 mutual passion with a fervour and a force that 
 shook her like a whirlwind; he upbraided her 
 with her caprices, with her coldness, with her 
 selfishness, till the words cut her like sharp 
 stripes : he hesought her by the love with which 
 he loved her till the voluptuous sweetness of it 
 stole over all her senses, and held her silent 
 and enthralled. 
 
 He knelt at her feet, and held her hands in his. 
 
 "Does your life content you?" he said at the 
 last. " Can greatness of any sort content a woman 
 without love ? Can any eminence, or power, or 
 possession make her happiness without love? 
 Say that I am poor; that coming to me you 
 would come to what in your sight were poverty ; 
 is wealth so great a thing measured against the 
 measureless strength of passion ? Are not thft 
 real joys of our lives things unpurchaseable? 
 Oh, my love, my love ! If you had no preference 
 for me I were the vainest fool to urge you ; but, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 325 
 
 as it is does the world that tires you, the 
 society that wearies you, the men and women 
 who fatigue you the adulation that nauseates 
 you the expenditure that after all is but a vul- 
 garity in your sight the acquisition that has 
 lost its charm for you with long habit, like the 
 toys of a child ; are all those things so supreme 
 with you that you can send me from you for 
 their sake? Is not one hour of mutual love 
 worth all the world can give ? " 
 
 His arms held her close, he drew her down 
 to him nearer and nearer till his head rested on 
 her breast, and he felt the tumultuous throbbing 
 of her heart. For one moment of scarce con- 
 scious weakness she did not resist or repulse 
 him, but surrendered herself to the spell of his 
 power. He moved her as no mortal creature 
 had ever had strength to do ; a whole world 
 unknown opened to her with his touch and his 
 gaze; she loved him. For one moment she 
 forgot all else. 
 
 But all the while, even in the temporary 
 oblivion to which she had yielded, she never 
 dreamed of granting what he prayed. 
 
326 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 The serenity and pride in her were shaken to 
 their roots ; she was humbled in her own sight ; 
 she was ashamed of the momentary delirium to 
 which she had abandoned herself ; she strove in 
 vain to regain composure and indifference : come 
 what would, he was near to her as no other 
 man had ever been. 
 
 She drew her domino about her with a shudder, 
 though the blood coursed like fever in her veins. 
 
 " You must hate me or forget me," she mur- 
 mured, as she tried to take her mask from his 
 hand. " You know it is no use. I could not live 
 poor. Perhaps you are right ; all those things are 
 habits, follies, egotisms oh, perhaps. But such 
 as they are such as I am I could never live 
 without them." 
 
 He stood erect, and his face grew cold. 
 
 " That is your last word, Madame ? " 
 
 " Yes. What else should I say ? No other 
 her voice faltered a moment and grew very weak 
 " No other man will ever be anything to me, if 
 that content you. But more is impossible/* 
 
 He bowed low in silence, and gave her up her 
 mask. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 327 
 
 She felt afraid to look up at his face. 
 
 The door opened on them noisily ; the Arch- 
 duchess and Madame Mila were returning to re- 
 fresh themselves with their supper ere descending 
 again to fresh diversions. Behind them came 
 the Due de St. Louis and all the men of their 
 party, and their servants with the tressels for the 
 setting of the tahle in their box. 
 
 They were fuller than ever of laughter, mirth, 
 high spirits, and riotous good humour ; their white 
 teeth shone under the lace of their loups, and 
 their eyes sparkled through the slits. They had 
 frightened some people, and teased more, and 
 had been mistaken for two low actresses and 
 jested with accordingly, and were as much flat- 
 tered as the actresses would have been had they 
 been taken for princesses. 
 
 The Lady Hilda prayed of the Archduchess's 
 goodness to be excused from awaiting the supper ; 
 she had been ill all day, and her headache was 
 very severe. 
 
 The Archduchess was in too high spirits to 
 listen very much, or to care who went or who 
 stayed. 
 
328 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " Take me to the carriage, Due," said Lady 
 Hilda, putting her hand on the arm of M. de St. 
 Louis. 
 
 Delia Kocca held the door open for her. He 
 bowed very low, once more, as she passed him. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE next day was Ash Wednesday. 
 
 Madame Mila awoke too late for mass, and 
 with a feverish throbbing in her temples. She 
 and the Archduchess had only left the Veglione 
 as the morning sun came up bright and tranquil 
 over the shining waters of the river from behind 
 the eastern hills. 
 
 Madame Mila yawned and yawned again a 
 score of times, drank a little green tea to waken 
 herself, thought how horrid Lent was, and ran 
 over in her mind how much she would confess 
 at confession. 
 
 She determined to repent her sins very peni- 
 tently. She would only go to musical parties, 
 
330 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 she would wear no low bodices, she would eat fish 
 twice a-week the red mullets were really very 
 nice and she would go for all holy week en 
 retraite: if she did all that, the most severe 
 monitor could not require her to give up 
 Maurice. 
 
 Poor Maurice ! she smiled to herself, in the 
 middle of a yawn ; how devoted he was ! he 
 only lived on her breath, and if she dismissed 
 him would kill himself with absinthe. She 
 really believed it. She did not dream that 
 Maurice, submissive slave though he was, had 
 his consolations for slavery, and was at that 
 moment looking into the eyes of the prettiest 
 artist's model in Floralia. 
 
 It was the Day of Ashes, as all the bells of the 
 city had tolled out far and wide ; and Madame 
 Mila, over her green tea, really felt penitent. 
 For the post had brought her three terribly 
 thick letters, and the letters were bills ; and the 
 sum total that was wanted immediately was some 
 sixty thousand francs, and how could a poor 
 dear little woman who had spent all her money 
 send that or a tenth of it : and Spiridion 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 331 
 
 wouldn't he had too many bills of Blanche 
 Souris' to pay ; and poor Maurice couldn't he 
 invariably lost at play much more than he pos- 
 sessed, after the manner of his generation. 
 
 Madame Mila really cried about it, and felt 
 ready to promise any amount of repentance if she 
 could get those sixty thousand francs this Lent. 
 
 " And to think of me running myself off my 
 feet in that muslin apron collecting for the poor !" 
 she thought, with a sense that heaven behaved 
 very ill to her in return for her charities. " I 
 suppose I must ask Hilda," she reflected ; " she 
 always does give when you ask her if that man 
 don't prevent her now.' 
 
 For the champagne and the mask and the great 
 joyousness of her soul had prevented Madame 
 Mila from observing any difference between her 
 cousin and Delia Eocca, and as he had left the 
 box immediately after her cousin, she had sup- 
 posed that they had gone away together why 
 shouldn't they ? 
 
 " I must ask Hilda to lend it me," she said 
 to herself. 
 
 To say lend was agreeable to her feelings, not 
 
532 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 of course that there was any serious necessity to 
 repay between such near relatives ; and she sent 
 her maid across the corridor to enquire when she 
 could come into her cousin's room. 
 
 The maid returned with a little unsealed note 
 which the Lady Hilda had desired should be 
 given to Madame Mila when she should awake. 
 The note only said : " I am gone to Rome for 
 some few weeks, dear; write to me at the lies 
 Britanniques if you want anything." 
 
 " Good gracious, what can have happened ! " 
 said Madame Mila, in utter amaze. " They must 
 have quarrelled last night." And she proceeded 
 to cross-examine all the hotel people. 
 
 Lady Hilda had left by the morning train, 
 and had not taken her carriage horses with 
 her, only the riding horses, and had kept on 
 her rooms at the Murat: that was all they 
 knew. 
 
 " She is very uncertain and uncomfortable to 
 have to do with," thought Madame Mila, in vague 
 irritation. " Anybody else would have asked me 
 to go with her." 
 
 A sudden idea occurred to her, and she sent 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 333 
 
 her maid to find out if the Duca della Rocca 
 were in Floralia. 
 
 At his palace they said that he was. 
 
 " Dear me, perhaps he'll go after her/' thought 
 Madame Miia. " But I don't know why she's 
 so secret about it, and takes such precautions. 
 Nobody'd cut her for anything she might do 
 so long as she's all that money ; and so long as 
 she don't marry she can't lose it.'* 
 
 Madame Mila did not understand it at all. Her 
 experience in the world assured her that her 
 cousin might have Delia Rocca, or anybody else, 
 constantly beside her whenever she liked, and no- 
 body would say anything so long as she had all 
 that money. 
 
 She felt that she was badly treated, that there 
 was something not confided to her, and also she 
 certainly ought to have been asked to go to Rome 
 at her cousin's expense. She was sulky and 
 irritated. 
 
 " Hilda is so queer and so selfish," she said to 
 herself, and began a letter to the lies Britanni- 
 ques ; with many tender endearments and much 
 pathos, and the most gracefully- worded appeal 
 
334 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 possible for the loan of the sixty thousand 
 francs. 
 
 She would have gone to Rome herself, being 
 well aware that written demands are much more 
 easily repulsed than spoken ones. But she had 
 no money at all. She had lost a quarter's in- 
 come at play since she had been in the town, and 
 she could not pay the hotel people till her hus- 
 band should send her more money, and he 
 was hunting bears on the Pic du Midi, with 
 Blanche Souris established at Pau, and when 
 that creature was with him he was always very 
 tardy in answering letters for money, bears or no 
 bears, and of course he would make the bears his 
 excuse now. 
 
 Fairly overwhelmed, poor little Madame Mila 
 had a long fit of hysterics, and her maids had to 
 send in great haste for ether and the Vicomte 
 Maurice. 
 
 She rallied by dinner time enough to eat 
 two dozen oysters, some lobster croquettes, an 
 omelette aux fines herbes, and some prawn 
 soup, with a nice little bottle of Veuve. Clicquot's 
 sweetest wine, the most maigre repast in tho 
 
IiV A WINTER CITY. 335 
 
 world, and one that must have satisfied even 
 S. Francis had he been there ; but still things 
 were very dreadful, and on the whole she was in 
 the proper frame of mind for the Day of Ashes, 
 and in the confessional next morning sobbed 
 so much that her confessor was really touched, 
 and was not too severe with her about her 
 Maurices, past, present, or to come. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IN three weeks' time Lady Hilda returned from 
 Rome. 
 
 She had been affectionately received by the 
 Holy Father ; she had been the idol of the nobles 
 of the Black ; she had bought a quantity of 
 pictures, and marbles, and bronzes, and Castel- 
 lani jewellery ; she had gone to early mass every 
 day, and ridden hard every day ; she had thought 
 Totila would have been more bearable than 
 Signer Rosa, and she had shuddered at the 
 ruined flora of the Colosseum and the scrapings 
 and bedaubings of the Palace of the Caesars. 
 
 She returned contemptuous, disgusted, tired 
 of the age she lived in, and regretful that she 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 337 
 
 had not spared herself the sight of so much 
 desecration. She conceived that Genseric or 
 the Constable de Bourbon must have been much 
 less painful than a syndicate and an army of 
 bricklayers. She refused to go out anywhere on the 
 score of its being Lent, and she meditated going 
 to London for the season to that very big house 
 in Eaton Square, which she honoured for about 
 three months in as many years. She hated 
 London, and its society was a mob, and its 
 atmosphere was thickened soda-water, and no 
 other place had such horrible endless dinner 
 parties. Still she was going ; when ? oh, to- 
 morrow or next week. 
 
 But to-morrow became yesterday, and next 
 week became last week, and her black and whita 
 liveries were still airing themselves on the steps 
 of the Murat, and her black horses still were 
 trotting to and fro the stones of Floralia, 
 bearing little Madame Mila hither an<j5 
 thither. 
 
 Their own mistress stirred out but little ; it 
 was damp weather, and she coughed, and she 
 ihut herself up with millions of hyacinths and 
 
338 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 narcissi, and painted a St. Ursula on wood for 
 her chapel in Paris. 
 
 She painted well, but the St. Ursula pro* 
 grossed but slowly. 
 
 When she was alone she would let her palette 
 fall to her side and sit thinking ; and the bells 
 would ring across the waters till she hated them. 
 
 What was the use of painting a St. Ursula ? 
 St. Ursula did not want to be painted ; and all 
 art was nothing but repetition : nobody had 
 found out anything in colour really, since 
 Giotto, though to be sure he could not paint 
 transparencies or reflections. And she would 
 leave her St. Ursula impatiently, and read 
 Cavalcaselle and Zugler and Winckelmann and 
 Rurnohr and Passavant, and when she did go 
 out would go to some little remote, unvisited 
 chapel and sit for hours before some dim dis- 
 puted fresco. 
 
 She would be in London next week, in its blaze 
 of gas, jewels, luxury, and political discussion ; 
 she said that she liked these calm, dusky, silent 
 places, alone with S. Louis and S. Giles and 
 S. Jerome. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 339 
 
 Madame Mila puzzled over her conduct in 
 vain. She did not dare to ask anything, be- 
 cause there were those sixty thousand francs, and 
 her cousin had helped her ahout them, and you 
 cannot say very intrusive or impertinent things 
 to a person who is lending you money ; but it 
 was very odd, thought Madame Mila incessantly, 
 because she evidently was unhappy about the 
 man, and wanted him, and yet must have sent 
 him away. Of course she couldn't have mar- 
 ried him ; but still there were ways of managing 
 everything; and in Hilda's position she really 
 could do as she liked, and nobody ever would 
 even have said a word. 
 
 Of course she would not have married him; 
 that Madame Mila knew ; but Society would have 
 made no objection to his being about her always 
 like her courier and her pug and the rest of her 
 following; anA if Society doesn't object to a 
 thing, why on earth should you not do it ? 
 
 II ne faut pas etre plus royaliste que le roi : 
 there cannot be the slightest necessity to be more 
 scrupulous than the people that are round 
 you; indeed, to attempt to be more so is to 
 
 z 2 
 
340 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 be disagreeable and tacitly impertinent to 
 others. 
 
 There is a certain latitude, which taken, makes 
 you look much more amiable. Madame Mila was 
 kissed on both cheeks really with sincerity by 
 many ladies in many cities, merely because her 
 nice management of her Maurice made their 
 Maurices easier for them, and their pleasant con- 
 sciousness of her frailty was the one touch which 
 made them all akin. Polyandry made easy is a 
 great charm in Society there is no horrid scan- 
 dal for any one, and no fuss at all : Monsieur is 
 content and Madame enjoys herself, everybody 
 goes everywhere, and everything is as it should 
 be. 
 
 " If that old man had lived, Hilda would have 
 been glad to be like everyone else," Madame Mila 
 thought, with much impatience. " Of course, 
 because she is quite free, she don't care a bit to 
 use her freedom." 
 
 Madame Mila herself felt that although her 
 passion for Maurice was the fifty-sixth passion of 
 ner soul, and the most ardent of all her existence, 
 that even Maurice himself would have lost some 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 341 
 
 of his attraction if he had lost the pleasant 
 savour of incorrectness that attached to him, and 
 if she had not had to take all those precautions 
 ahout his going to another hotel, &c., &c., which 
 enabled her to hold her place in courts and em- 
 bassies, and made her friends all able to say with 
 clear consciences, "Nothing in it, oh dear! no- 
 thing in it whatever ! " Not that she cared about 
 anyone believing that there was nothing in it ; 
 she did not even wish anybody to believe it ; 
 she only wanted it said that was all ; because, 
 whilst it can be said, a woman " goes every- 
 where " still, and though Heloise or Francesca 
 may be willing to " lose the world for love," the 
 Femme Galante has no notion of doing anything 
 of the sort. 
 
 " She must have refused him?" the Due de 
 St. Louis said to her more than once, harassed 
 by chagrin at the failure of his project, and by 
 a curiosity which his good breeding for- 
 bade him to seek to satisfy at the fountain 
 head. 
 
 " Oh, I daresay she did," said Madame Mila, 
 " Of course -she did. But if she care for him, 
 
342 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 why should she send him away? il y a des 
 moyens pour tout. They are brouilles somehow, 
 that is certain. Oh, yes certain ! He was here 
 when Hilda came back, and we passed him one 
 day in the street, and he took off his "hat and 
 bowed, and looked very cold and pale and went 
 onwards ; and he has never called once. Now 
 you know he is gone to the Marshes, and after 
 that they say he is going into Sicily to see after 
 that brigand Pibro. It is not like an Italian 
 to be so soon repulsed." 
 
 " It is very like an Italian to be too proud to 
 ask twice," said the Due, and added with a little 
 smile, " He never said anything to me. Only 
 once lately he said that he was sure that Miladi 
 would be a very different creature if she had home 
 interests and children ! " 
 
 " Good gracious ! " said Madame Mila, " she 
 was quite right to have nothing to do with him 
 if he have that kind of ideas. How little he 
 knows her too ! Hilda is quite unnatural about 
 children ; quite horrid ; she never speaks to 
 them; and when she saw my dear little Lili 
 dressed as Madame TArchicluc for the babies* 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 343 
 
 fancy ball at the Elyse'e, what do you think 
 she said ? she told me that I polluted the 
 child's brain before it could distinguish right 
 from wrong, and that a mixture of Judic and 
 Fashion at five years old was disgusting ; and 
 Lili looked lovely ! she was so prettily rouged, 
 and Maurice had given her a necklace of pink 
 pearls. But Hilda has no human feeling at all." 
 
 "Delia Rocca did not think so," said the 
 Due. 
 
 " Delia Rocca was in love," said Madame 
 Mila, scornfully, "with the beaux yeaux de sa 
 cassette too ; as well. They may only have 
 quarrelled, you know. Hilda is very disagree- 
 able and difficult. By the way, Deutschland 
 went after her to Rome, and proposed to her 
 again." 
 
 " Indeed ! and she refused him again ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. She refuses them all. I did fancy 
 she was touched by Delia Rocca, but you see it 
 came to nothing; she is as cold as a crystal. 
 She likes to know that heaps of men are 
 wretched about her, and she likes to study those 
 dingy old paintings, and that is all she does 
 
344 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 like, or ever will like. She will be very un- 
 happy as she grows older, and I dare say she 
 will be quite capable of leaving all her money 
 away from her family to build a cathedral, or 
 found a School of Art." 
 
 And Madame Mila, impatient, nodded to the 
 Due, and dashed away in the victoria behind 
 the white and black liveries. She was managing 
 to enjoy her Lent after all : her mind being at 
 rest about those sixty thousand francs, there was 
 no occasion to be so very rigid ; low bodices 
 she did not wear, because she was a woman of 
 her word; but then she had half a hundred 
 divine confections, cut square, or adorned with 
 ruffs, or open en coeur with loveliest lace and 
 big bouquets of roses, to make that form of 
 renunciation simpler ; there was plenty going 
 on, and little " sauteries," which nobody could 
 call balls, and pleasant gatherings, quite harm- 
 less, because only summoned for "music/' and 
 altogether, what with the oasis of mi-Careme, 
 und the prolongation of the Carnival in Russian 
 houses, life was very endurable ; and there were 
 Neapolitan oysters to fast upon comfortably. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 345 
 
 Heaven tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, 
 and it would be hard if Society did not soften 
 penitence to the Femme Galante. 
 
 The Lady Hilda did keep her Lent, and kept 
 it strictly, and was never seen at the " sauteries," 
 and rarely at the musical parties. But then 
 everyone knew that she was devote (when she 
 was not slightly Voltairean), and it could not be 
 expected that a woman going to reign in the 
 vast world of London would put herself out to 
 be amiable in Floralia. Yet, had they only 
 known it, she loved Floralia in her own heart 
 as she had never loved any other place upon 
 earth. The beautiful small city set along its 
 shining waters, with all the grace of its classic 
 descent, its repose of contemplative art, its 
 sanctity of imperishable greatness, had a hold 
 upon her that no other spot under the sun 
 could ever gain. If she thought others unworthy 
 of it, she thought herself no less unworthy. 
 It seemed to her that to be worthy to dwell in 
 it, one needed to be wise and pure and half 
 divine, even as St. Ursula herself. 
 
 And all the pride in her was shaken to the 
 
346 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 roots : she was full of a restless, dissatisfied 
 humility; there were times when she hated herself, 
 and was weary of herself to utter impatience. 
 She shut herself up with her art studies and the 
 old frescoes, because they pained her less than 
 any other thing. She was passionately un- 
 happy : though to other people she only seemed 
 a trifle more cynical and more contemptuous 
 than before, no more. 
 
 The easy morality with which her cousin 
 would have solved all difficulty, was not possible 
 to her. She would not have cheated the old 
 dead man from whom her riches came, by 
 evading him in the spirit of his will whilst 
 adhering to the letter. Unless she gave up her 
 riches, her lover could be nothing to her : and 
 the thought of giving them up never even occurred 
 to her as possible. She did not know it, because 
 she was so very tired of so many things ; but the 
 great world she had always lived in was very 
 necessary to her, and had absolute dominion 
 over her ; it became tiresome, as the trammels 
 of empire do to a monarch ; but to lay down her 
 sceptre would have been an abdication, and an 
 
IN A W^fER CITY. 347 
 
 abnegation, impossible to her. And she despised 
 herself because they were impossible ; despised 
 herself because to his generosity she had only 
 responded with what at best was but a vulgar 
 egotism ; despised herself because she had been 
 so weak that she had permitted his familiarities 
 and his caresses unrebuked ; despised herself 
 for everything with that self scorn of a proud 
 woman, which is far more intense and bitter 
 than any scorn that she has ever dealt out upon 
 others. 
 
 She had lived all her life on a height of un- 
 conscious, but no less absorbing, self-admi- 
 ration. She had looked down on all the aims 
 and objects and attainments and possessions of 
 all other persons with a bland and superb 
 vanity ; she had been accustomed to regard 
 herself as perfect, as others all united to tell 
 her that she was ; and her immunity from mean 
 frailties and puerile emotions had given her a 
 belief that she was lifted high above the 
 passions and the follies of humankind; now, 
 all of a sudden, she had dropped to the lowest 
 depths of weakness and of selfishness passion 
 
348 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 had touched her, yet had left her without its 
 courage. 
 
 In those long, lonely, studious days in Lent, 
 studying her religious art with wandering 
 thoughts, she grew to hate herself; yet, to resign 
 her empire for another's sake never even dis- 
 tantly appeared to her as possible. 
 
 One day, in a little private chapel, where there 
 were some fine dim works in tempera, only to he 
 seen by earliest morning light, she was startled 
 by seeing him near her; he was coming from 
 the sacristy on business of the church ; he looked 
 at her quickly, and would have passed on with a 
 silent salutation, but she approached him on an 
 impulse which a moment later she regretted. 
 
 "Need you avoid me?" she said, hurriedly. 
 " Surely I go from here so soon we might still 
 be friends ? People would talk less " 
 
 He looked down on her with a cold severity 
 which chilled her, like the passing of an icy wind. 
 
 "Madame," he answered her, with a fleeting 
 smile, " your northern lovers, perhaps, may have 
 been content to accept such a position. I am, I 
 confess, thankless. I thought you too proud to 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 349 
 
 heed what ' people said ' ; but if that trouble 
 you I go myself to Sicily to-morrow." 
 
 Then he bowed very low once more, and, with 
 nis salutation to the altar, went on his way 
 through the dusky shadows of the little chapel 
 out into the morning sunshine of the street. 
 
 Her eyes grew blind with tears, and she sank 
 down before a wooden bench upon her knees ; yet 
 could not pray there for the bitterness and 
 tumult of her heart. 
 
 She found her master in him. 
 
 His passionless unpardoning gaze sank into 
 her very soul, and seemed like a ruthless light, 
 that showed her all the wretchedness of pride and 
 self-love and vainest ostentations, which she had 
 harboured there and set up as her gods. 
 
 She comprehended that she had wronged 
 him, and that he would not forgive. After 
 all knowing what she knew, she had had 
 no right to deal with him as she had done. 
 She had allowed him to bask in the sun of a fool's 
 paradise ; and then had awakened him rudely, and 
 had sent him adrift. She had been ungenerous : 
 she saw it, and hated her own fault with the 
 
350 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 repentance of a generous temper. She had 
 gone through the world with but little heed 
 for the pain of others ; but his pain smote 
 her conscience. After all, he had a title to up- 
 braid her passionately ; that he refrained from 
 doing so made her own self-reproach the keener. 
 There had been so many moments when with 
 justice he might have felt certain that she loved 
 him: and how could he guess the rest? She 
 knew that she had wronged him; and she was 
 humbled in her own sight ; she had lost her own 
 self-respect, and her own motives seemed to her 
 but poor, and almost base. 
 
 No amorous entreaty, no feverish pursuit of 
 her, had ever moved her so intensely as that 
 silent condemnation, as that contemptuous re- 
 jection, of her poor half-hearted overture of 
 peace. 
 
 When she left the chapel she loved him as she 
 had never done before ; yet it never occurred to 
 her to abandon her riches for his sake. The 
 habits and the ways of the world were too close 
 about her ; its artificial needs and imperious 
 demands we^e too entirely her second nature ; its 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 351 
 
 admiration was too necessary to her, and her 
 custom of deference, to its conventional laws too 
 much an instinct ; she had heen too long accus- 
 tomed to regard the impulses of the heart as 
 insane follies, and poverty of life as pain and 
 madness. 
 
 The same evening he did leave the town for 
 Sicily, where he had lands which, though beau- 
 tiful, were utterly unproductive, and constantly 
 harried by the system of brigandage, which 
 paralysed the district. " He will get shot most 
 likely. He has declared that he will not return 
 without having captured Pibro," said an Italian 
 in her hearing, at a musical gathering, dedicated 
 to the music of Pergolese. Pibro was a notorious 
 Sicilian robber. The sweet chords sounded very 
 harsh and jangled in her ears; she left early, 
 and went home and took a heavy dose of chloral, 
 which only gave her dark and dreary dreams. 
 
 "What miserable creatures we are!" she 
 thought, wearity. " We cannot even sleep natu- 
 rally poor people can sleep ; they lie on hard 
 benches, and dream with smiles on their faces." 
 
 She got up and looked out at the moonlight 
 
352 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 on the river, and walked to and fro her chamber ; 
 a lofty, slender, white figure in the pale gleam 
 of the lamp -rays. 
 
 A passionate, feverish, disordered pain con- 
 sumed her. It terrified her. Would it be thus 
 weeks, months, years all her life ? 
 
 "Perhaps it is the chloral that unnerves one," 
 she thought; " I will not take it any more." 
 
 " Only fancy, ma chere," said Madame Mila to 
 her next morning, with the pretty cat-like cruelty 
 of the Mila species, "only fancy that poor dear 
 Delia Kocca is gone to his death in Sicily. So 
 they say. There is a horrid brigand who has 
 been hanging some of his farmers there to trees, 
 and burning their cottages, Delia Rocca's 
 farmers, you know ; and he is gone to see about 
 it, and to capture the wretched creature, as if he 
 could when all the soldiers and all the police have 
 failed ! He will be quite certain to be shot ; isn't 
 it a pity ? He is so handsome, and if he would 
 marry that little American Spiffler girl with all 
 her millions he might be very happy. That little 
 Spinier is really not unpresentable, and her people 
 still give the largest dot ever heard of if they can 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 353 
 
 get one of the very old titles; and they will make 
 no difficulty about religion ; they were Jumpers 
 or Shakers or something themselves ; he might 
 send her to the Sacre Cosur for a year or two." 
 
 " If he be gone to be shot, what use would the 
 Spiffler dot be ? " said Lady Hilda, with coolest 
 calm, as on a subject not even of most remote 
 interest, and she went on glazing a corner of the 
 draperies of her St. Ursula with carmine. 
 
 " The marriage was proposed to him, I know/' 
 continued Madame Mila, unheeded. " The 
 Featherleighs undertook it, but he refused point 
 blank. 'Je ne me vends pas' was all he said. It 
 was very rude, and really that little Spinier might 
 be made something of; those very tiny creatures 
 uever look vulgar, and are so easy to dress ; as it 
 is, I dare say Furstenberg will take her, if Nina 
 will let him ; it is on the tapis, and Delia Bocca 
 won't come back alive, I suppose isn't it a hare- 
 brained thing to do ? there are gendarmes to 
 look after the brigands, but it seems he has some 
 fancy because they were his own people that suf- 
 fered but no doubt he told you all about it, ag 
 you and he are such Mends." 
 
 AA 
 
354 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " He merely said he was going to Sicily," said 
 the Lady Hilda, languidly, still glazing her St- 
 Ursula. 
 
 Madame Mila eyed her curiously. 
 
 " You look very pale, dear ; I think you paint 
 too much, and read too much," she said, affec- 
 tionately. "I wish you had tried to persuade 
 him into this Spinier affair ; it would be just the 
 marriage for him, and a girl of seventeen may 
 be drilled into anything, especially when she has 
 small bones and little colour and good teeth ; if 
 Furstenberg gets her he will soon train her into 
 good form only he will gamble away all her 
 money, let them tie it up as they may ; and they 
 can't tie it up very much if they want to make a 
 high marriage. Good men won't sacrifice them- 
 selves unless they get some control of the 
 fortune. They wouldn't have tied it at all with 
 Delia Rocca. Wouldn't the little Spiffler have 
 been better for him than Sicily ? " 
 
 " It depends upon taste," said the Lady Hilda, 
 changing her brushes. 
 
 " Very odd taste," said Madame Mila. " They 
 say Pibro always cuts the heads off the men he 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 355 
 
 takes, and sends them into Palermo the heads 
 you know with lemons in their mouths like 
 boars ; isn't it horrible ? And Delia Rocea intends 
 going up after the monster in his very fastnesses 
 upon the mountains ! Fancy that beautiful head 
 
 of his ! Really, dear, you do look very ill : 
 
 when will you go to London ? " 
 
 " Oh, some time next week." 
 
 She went to the window and opened it ; the 
 room swam round her, the sounds of the streets 
 grew dull upon her ears. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't go till after the races," 
 said Madame Mila, placidly. " I mean to stay. 
 The place is really very nice, though one does 
 see the same people too often. Fancy poor 
 Paolo ending like John the Baptist the head in 
 the charger, you know I wonder you let him go, 
 for you had a great deal of influence over him, 
 and say what you like, the Spifner girl would have 
 been better. How can you keep that window 
 open, with the tramontana blowing ? thanks so 
 much for lending me the horses goodness ! what 
 is the matter ? " 
 
 Madame Mila paused frightened ; for the first 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 time in all her life Lady Hilda, leaning against 
 the strong north wind, had lost her consciousness 
 and had fainted. 
 
 " How very strange people are," thought 
 Madame Mila, when an hour later her cousin 
 had recovered herself, and had attributed her 
 weakness to the chloral at night and the 
 scent of her oil paints. " If she cared for 
 him like that, why didn't she keep him when 
 she had got him ? she might have hung 
 him to her skirt like her chatelaine ; nobody 
 would ever have said anything; I do begin 
 to think that with all her taste, and all her 
 cleverness, she has, after all, not so very much 
 savoir faire." 
 
 No one had much savoir faire to Madame 
 Mila's mind who did not manage always to enjoy 
 themselves without scruples and also without 
 scenes. 
 
 The house in London was ordered to be kept 
 ready night and day, but no one went to occupy 
 it. M. Camille Odissot, stimulated by dread of 
 his patroness's daily arrival in Paris, worked 
 marvels of celerity upon the ballroom walls, and 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 357 
 
 drew with most exquisite precision bands of 
 Greek youths and maidens in the linked mazes 
 of the dance, but none went to admire his 
 efforts and execution. No fashionable news- 
 papers announced the Lady Hilda's arrival in 
 either city ; she stayed on an i on in Floralia. 
 
 " When I know that he is safe out of Sicily 1 
 will go," she said to herself; and let the piles 
 of letters and invitation cards lie and accumulate 
 as they would. 
 
 She ceased to paint, and left the St. Ursula 
 unfinished ; he had sketched it out for her on the 
 panel, and had first tinted it en grisaille. She 
 had not the courage to go on with it ; she changed 
 her mode of life, 9 id rode or drove all the day 
 long in the sweet fresh spring weather. When she 
 was not in the open air she felt suffocated. The 
 danger which he ran was no mere exaggeration 
 of her cousin's malicious inventiveness, but was 
 a fact, true and ghastly enough ; no one heard of 
 or from him, but his friends said that it was the 
 most fatal madness that had led him to risk his 
 life in the fastnesses of the Sicilian thieves. 
 
 " It is sheer suicide," they said around her. 
 
358 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " What had he to do there ? if the law cannot 
 enforce itself, leave it alone in its impotency. 
 But he had some idea that because his own 
 villages were amongst those who suffered most, 
 it was his place to go there and do what the law 
 cannot do: he was always Quixotic, poor 
 Paolo. The last thing heard of him was that 
 he had left Palermo with an escort of men whom 
 he had chosen and paid himself, and had gone 
 up towards the mountains. His dead body will 
 be the first tidings that we have ; the monster 
 Pibro has spies in all directions, and holds that 
 district in a perfect reign of terror." 
 
 She went out into society as Easter came, 
 and heard all that they said, and gave no 
 sign of what she suffered. Worth sent her new 
 marvels of the spring, and she wore them, and 
 was endlessly courted and envied, and quoted and 
 wondered at. She was a little chillier and more 
 cynical than ever, and women observed with 
 pleasure that she was looking ill and growing too 
 thin, which would spoil her beauty. That was 
 all. But she had never thought such pain 
 possible in life as she endured now. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 359 
 
 " If he die it is I who will have killed him," 
 she said in her own heart night and day. 
 
 Once she found herself in her long lonely rides 
 near Palestrina, and met the old steward, and 
 recognised him, and went into the sad, silent, 
 deserted house ; and listened to the old man's 
 stories of his beloved lord's boyhood and man- 
 hood, and of the people's clinging feudal attach- 
 ment to him, and of his devotion to them in the 
 time of the cholera pestilence. 
 
 " There is not an old charcoal burner or a 
 little goatherd on the estates that would not give 
 his life for Prince Paolo," the steward said to 
 her, crying like a child because there was no 
 news from Sicily. 
 
 The same evening she went to a great Pasqua 
 ball at the Trasimene villa. As they fastened 
 the diamonds over her hair and in her bosom she 
 felt to hate the shining, senseless, soulless stones ; 
 they were the emblem of the things for which 
 she had lost him; and at that very hour, for 
 ought they knew, he might be tying dead on 
 some solitary shore by the fair blue sea of 
 Theocritus ! 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 With a heart sick with terror and uncertainty 
 she went to the brilliant crowds of the Trasimene 
 house ; to the talk that was so frivolous and 
 tedious, to the dances she never joined in, to the 
 homage she was so tired of, to the monotonies 
 and personalities and trivialities that make up 
 society. 
 
 M. de St. Louis hurried up to her : 
 " Madame, quelle chance ! our new Herakles 
 has slain his Dragon. Maremma has just had 
 telegrams from Palermo. Delia Rocca has posi- 
 tively captured the scoundrel Pibro, and taken him 
 into the city, much wounded, but alive, and in the 
 king's gaol by this time. A fine thing to have 
 done, is it not ? Of course we shall all praise it, 
 since it has succeeded ; although, in truth, a 
 madder exploit never was attempted. Paolo 
 was ten days in the mountains living on a few 
 beans and berries : he has received no hurt 
 whatever ; I should think they will give him the 
 Grand Cordon of the Santissima Annunziata. It 
 is really a superb thing to have clone. The mon- 
 ster has been the terror of that district for ten 
 years. Palermo went utterly mad with joy. It 
 
IN A WINTfiE CITY. 861 
 
 is quite a pity there is no Ariosto to celebrate 
 such a feat. It is very Ariosto-like. Indeed, all 
 the best Italians are so. Englishmen have long 
 ceased to be in any manner Shakesperian ; but 
 Italians remain like their poets." 
 
 The Due wandered away into the subtlest 
 and most discursive analysis of the Ariostian 
 school and of the national characteristics which 
 it displayed and was nurtured on ; but she had 
 no ear to hear it. 
 
 Outwardly she sat indifferent and calm, but 
 her brain and her heart were in tumult with the 
 sweetest, loftiest, grandest pride that she had 
 ever known pride without egotism, without 
 vanity, without a thought of self; true pride, 
 exultant in heroism, not the arrogant pride of 
 self- culture, of self- worship, of self-love,, D.ot the 
 paltry pride of rank and acquisition and phy- 
 sical perfection, not the pride of which all the 
 while she had been half contemptuous herself. 
 And then his life was safe ! 
 
 Yet, had he stood before her then she must 
 have given him the same answer at least, she 
 thought so. 
 
362 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " What a fine thing to have done ! " said 
 Madame Mila, pausing by her in the middle of 
 a waltz, with her brocade train ablaze with gold. 
 " And now he can come back and marry the 
 Spiffler girl. What do you say, Due ? " 
 
 " He will never marry la petite Spiffler," 
 said the Due, " nor any one else,'* he added, 
 with a glance of meaning at Lady Hilda. 
 
 All eyes turned upon her. She played idly 
 with her fan one painted long ago by Watteau. 
 
 " M. della Rocca has succeeded, so it is 
 heroism," she said, calmly. u Had he failed, I 
 suppose it would have been foolhardiness." 
 
 "Of course," said the Due. "Surely, Ma- 
 dame, Failure cannot expect to use the same 
 dictionary as Success ? " 
 
 "He must have the Santissima Annunziata, and 
 marry the big Spiffler dot," said Madame Mila. 
 
 " Nay, Comtesse, that were bathos indeed, 
 to make la petite Spiffler cousine du roi f Any- 
 how, let us rejoice that he is living, and that 
 the old Latin race is still productive of heroes, 
 I suppose we shall have details the day after 
 to-morrow." 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 363 
 
 " Whatever could he do it for?" said Madame 
 Mila, as she whirled away again in the encircling 
 arm of her Maurice : to Madame Mila such 
 trifles as duty, patriotism, or self-sacrifice could 
 not possibly be any motive power amongst 
 rational creatures. " Whatever could he do it 
 for ? I suppose to soften Hilda. But he must 
 know very little about her ; she hates anything 
 romantic ; you heard she called it foolhardy. 
 He never will be anything to her, not if he try 
 for ten years. She cares about him after her 
 fashion, but she cares much more about her- 
 self." 
 
 Lady Hilda did not sleep that night. 
 
 She did not even lie down; dry-eyed and 
 with fever in her veins, she sat by the window 
 watching the bright pale gold of the morning 
 widen over the skies, and the sea-green depth 
 of the river catch the first sun-rays and mirro 
 them. 
 
 She was so proud of him ah heaven, so 
 proud ! The courage of her temper answered to 
 the courage of his action. It was Heraklean 
 i* was Homeric that going forth single-handed 
 
364 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 to do what the law could not or would not do, 
 and set free from tyranny of brute force those 
 poor tillers of the soil who could not help 
 themselves. The very folly and madness of that 
 utter disregard of peril moved her to reverence ; 
 she who had all her life been environed with 
 the cool, calm, cautious, and circumspect cus- 
 toms of the world. 
 
 For one moment it seemed to her possible to 
 renounce everything for his sake. For one mo- 
 ment her own passion for the mere gauds and 
 pomps and possessions of the world looked to 
 her beside the simplicity and self-sacrifice of his 
 own life so poor and mean that she shrank from 
 it in disgust. For one moment she said to 
 herself " Love was enough." 
 
 He had been ready to give up his life for 
 a few poor labourers, who had no other claim 
 on him than that they lived upon the soil 
 he owned ; and she who loved him had not 
 the courage to renounce mere worldly riches 
 for his sake. She hated herself, and yet she 
 could not change herself. She cared for power, 
 for supremacy, for indulgence, for extravagance ; 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 365 
 
 she dreaded to hear the tittering mockery 
 of the women she had eclipsed so long at 
 all her present weakness ; it was all so poor, 
 so base, so unworthy, yet it enchained her : 
 the world had been her religion ; no one casts 
 off a creed long held without hard and cruel 
 strife. 
 
 " Oh, my love, how far beneath you I am ! " 
 she thought, she whose pride had been a bye- 
 word, and whose superb vanity had been an 
 invulnerable armour. 
 
 She could have kneeled down and kissed his 
 hands for very humility ; yet she could not re- 
 solve to yield. 
 
 " I might see him once more, before I go," 
 she thought, and so coward-like she put the 
 hour of decision from her. They must part, but 
 she might see him once more first. 
 
 She would go away of course, and her life in 
 the Winter City would be with the things of the 
 past, and she would grow used to the pain of dead 
 passion, and feel it less with time other women 
 did, and why not she ? 
 
 So she said to herself; and yet at moments a sort 
 
3G6 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 of despair appalled her : what would her future 
 be ? Only one long empty void, in whose hollow- 
 ness the " pleasures " of the world would rattle 
 like dead bones. She began to understand that 
 for a great love there is no death possible. It is 
 like Ahasuerus the Jew : it must live on in tor- 
 ment for ever. 
 
 And how she had smiled at all these things 
 when others had spoken of them ! 
 
 The days passed slowly one by one ; the 
 beautiful city was in its spring glory, and ran 
 over with the blossoms of flowers, as though it 
 were the basket that Persephone let fall. The 
 news-sheets were full of this deed which he had 
 done in Sicily ; she bought them all, down to the 
 tawdriest little sheet that held his name, and read 
 the well-known story again and again a hundred 
 and ten hundred times ; his friends expected him 
 to arrive in the town each day, but no one heard 
 anything direct from himself. 
 
 "It is strange he writes to none of us," said 
 Maremma ; " can anything have happened ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ; the papers would know it," said the 
 Due de St. Louis. 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 367 
 
 She overheard them, and listened with dry lips 
 and a beating heart. 
 
 Why did he write to no one ? The news-sheets 
 had announced that he had left Palermo for 
 Floralia. 
 
 " He may be coming back by the marshes," 
 someone else suggested; " he is reclaiming land 
 there." 
 
 Perhaps he stayed away, she thought, because 
 he had heard that she still remained in his native 
 city. 
 
 It was mid-April. Madame Mila was organ- 
 ising picnics under old Etruscan walls, and al- 
 fresco dinners in villa gardens, and she and her 
 kind were driving out on the tops of drags, and 
 playing baccarat upon anemone-studded lawns 
 by moonlight, and driving in again, at or after 
 midnight, singing Offenbach choruses, and going 
 to the big Cafe in the town for supper and 
 champagnes ; be it in winter or summer, spring 
 or autumn, town or country, youth or middle- age, 
 Madame Mila and her kind, contrive to make no 
 difference in their manner of life whatever ; they 
 would sing Schneider's songs in the Tombs of the 
 
368 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 Prophets, they would eat lobster salad on Mount 
 Olivet, and they would scatter their cigar ash 
 overVaucluse, Marathon, the Carnpo Santo, or the 
 grave at Ravenna with equal indifference ; they 
 are always amused, and defy alike the seasons and 
 the sanctities to stop them in their amusement. 
 
 It was mid-April, and with the beginning of 
 May would come the races, and with the races 
 the Winter City would become the Summer City, 
 and the winter -fashion always fled with one bound 
 to fresh fields and pastures new, and left the town 
 to silence, sunshine, roses, fruits, its own populace 
 with their summer songs and summer skies, and 
 perhaps here and there an artist or a poet, or 
 some such foolish person, who loved it best so in 
 its solitude. 
 
 " Do come with us, Hilda," said Madame 
 Mila one mid- April morning. 
 
 Madame Mila was attired in the simplest 
 morning costume of cream-hued Sicilienne 
 covered with ecru lace, and she had a simple 
 country Dorothy hat of cream-coloured velvet, 
 lined bleu-de-ciel, with wreaths of delicate 
 nemophilse and convolvuli and floating feathers, 
 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 369 
 
 act on one side of her head ; Lancret might have 
 Dainted her on a fan, or Fragonard on a cabinet ; 
 she was just going to drive out with five carriages 
 full of her friends to a picnic at Guido Salvareo's 
 villa; they were to dine there, play lansquenet 
 there, and come back in the small hours; 
 they had all postillions, silk-jacketted, powdered, 
 and with ribboned straw hats ; the horses were 
 belled, and the bells were jingling in the street ; 
 Madame Mila was in the most radiant spirits ; 
 she had won five hundred napoleons the night 
 before, and had them all to adventure over again 
 to-night. 
 
 " Do come with us, Hilda," she urged. " You 
 do nothing but go those stupid long drives by 
 yourself; it is very bad for you; and it will be 
 charming to-day ; Salvareo has such taste ; it is 
 really quite romantic to sit upon those anemones, 
 and have the goats come and stare at you ; and 
 he always does things so well, and his cook is so 
 good. Do come with us ; I am sure it would do 
 you good." 
 
 Lady Hilda looked up from the S. Ursula, 
 which she was finishing : 
 
 B B 
 
370 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 " My dear Mila ! you know perfectly well how 
 I detest that kind of thing. Teresa's songs, 
 drag seats, and eager efforts to imitate the worst 
 kind of women ! go to it, if it amuse you; hut, 
 with all gratitude, allow me to decline." 
 
 " How disagreeable you are ! " said Madame 
 Mila, pettishly. " One must do something with 
 oneself all these long days : if it were Palestrina, 
 I suppose you would go." 
 
 Lady Hilda deigned to give no reply. She 
 touched in the gold background of her Saint. 
 Madame Mila looked at her with irritation ; no one 
 likes to be despised, and she knew that her cousin 
 did very nearly despise her, and all the ways and 
 means of enjoyment in which her heart delighted. 
 
 Lady Hilda, tranquilly painting there, annoyed 
 her inexpressibly. Why should any woman be 
 above the box-seats of drags and all their con 
 comitant attractions? 
 
 She took her revenge. 
 
 - " Do as you like of course, but you always do 
 do that," she said carelessly. " There are two 
 seats vacant. St. Louis and Carlo Maremma were 
 to have gone with us, but they went to Delia 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 371 
 
 Rocca instead. Oh, didn't you know it? he 
 reached Palestrina two days ago very ill with 
 marsh fever. It is fever and cholera and ague 
 and all sorts of dreadful things all together. 
 Isn't it odd? to have escaped all that danger 
 in Sicily, and then get this in the swamps 
 coming hack? Nohody knew it till late last 
 night, when his steward got frightened, and 
 sent in for the physicians. He is very had, I 
 believe not likely to live. You know they go 
 down under that sometimes in twenty -four 
 hours." 
 
 Lady Hilda seemed to reach her at a single 
 step, though the distance of the room was 
 between them. 
 
 " Is that true ? or is it some jest ?" 
 
 Madame Mila, appalled, looked up into her face. 
 
 " It is true, quite true. Oh, Hilda, take your 
 hand off; you hurt me. How could I tell you 
 would care about it like that." 
 
 " Is it true ? " muttered her cousin again. 
 
 "Indeed, indeed it is," she whimpered 
 trembling. " Oh let me go, you spoil my lace. 
 If you ^ared for the man like that, why didn't 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 IN A WINTER C1TT 
 
 you keep him when you had got him ? I know 
 you could not have married him, but nobody 
 would have said anything." 
 
 Lady Hilda put her out into the corridor, and 
 closed the door and locked it within. 
 
 Madame Mila, frightened, astonished, and out- 
 raged, went down to her Maurice, and the drag, 
 and the ribboned and powdered postillions, and 
 the horses with their jingling bells and plaited 
 tails ; the gay calvacade rattled off along the 
 river-street towards the city gates as the clocks 
 tolled three. 
 
 Lady Hilda and S. Ursula were left alone. 
 
 Within less than half-an-hour the black horses 
 were harnessed and bore their mistress towards 
 Palestrina. Never before moved by impulse, 
 impulse alone governed her now ; the impulse of 
 despair and remorse. She cared nothing who 
 saw her or who knew ; for once she had forgotten 
 herself. 
 
 The long drive seemed eternity ; she thought 
 the steep winding mountain roads would never 
 end; when Palestrina came in sight, pale and 
 stately against its dark background of forest trees, 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. '373 
 
 ghe felt as if her heart would break. He had 
 gone through all those perils afar off, only to be 
 dying there ! 
 
 It was five o'clock by the convent chimes 
 when they reached the crest of the hill on which 
 the old place stood, The lovely hillside was 
 covered with the blue and white of the wild 
 hyacinths and gold of the wild daffodils. The lofty 
 stone pines spread their dark green roofs above 
 her head. Flocks of birds were singing, in th6 
 myrtle thickets, their sweet shrill evensong. 
 The shining valley lay below like a cloud of 
 amber light. The surpassing loveliness, the 
 intense stillness of it all, made the anguish 
 within her unbearable. What she had missed all 
 her life long ! 
 
 There was a chapel not far from the house set 
 in the midst of the pines, with the cross on it 
 summit touching the branches, and its doorway 
 still hung round with the evergreens and flowers 
 of its passed Easter feasts. There were men and 
 women and children standing about on the turf 
 in front of it ; they were most of them crying 
 bitterly. 
 
374 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 She stopped her horses there, and called a 
 woman to her, but her lips would not frame the 
 question. The woman guessed it : 
 
 " Yes, my beautiful lady," she said, with many 
 tears. " We have been praying for Prince Paolo. 
 He is very ill, up yonder. The marsh sickness 
 has got him. May the dear Mother of God save 
 him to us. But he is dying, they say " 
 
 " We would die in his stead, if the good God 
 would let us," said one of the men, drawing near : 
 the others sobbed aloud. 
 
 She put out her hand to the man the slender 
 proud hand that she had refused to princes. 
 Wondering, he fell on his knee and would have 
 kissed her hand. She drew back in horror. 
 
 " Do not kneel to me ! I have killed him ! " 
 she muttered ; and she urged her panting horses 
 forward to the house. 
 
 She bade them tell the Due de St. Louis to 
 come to her upon the terrace. She leaned there 
 tearless, white as death, still as marble ; the 
 beautiful, tranquil spring time all around, and the 
 valley shining like gold in the light of the des- 
 cending sun. It seemed to her that ages passed 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 376 
 
 before the soft step of her old friend sounded near 
 her : he was surprised and startled, but he did 
 not show it. 
 
 " There is still hope," he hastened to say, ere 
 she could speak. " Within the last hour he is 
 slightly better ; they give him quinine constantly. 
 If the chills and shivering do not return, it is just 
 possible that he may live. But" 
 
 His voice faltered in its serenity, and he turned 
 his head away. 
 
 "It is not likely?" 
 
 Her own voice had scarcely any sound of its 
 natural tone left in it, yet long habit was so strong 
 with her that she spoke calmly. 
 
 "It is not likely. This deadly marsh-poison 
 is short and fierce. After the fatigue and fasting 
 in Sicily it has taken fearful hold on him. But 
 in an hour or two they will know one way or 
 the other." 
 
 " I will stay here. Come and tell me often. 
 And if if the worst come let me see him. 
 Leave me now." 
 
 He looked at her, hesitated, then left her as 
 she asked. He guessed all that passed in her 
 
376 IN A WINTEE CITY. 
 
 thoughts ; all that had gone before : and he knew 
 that she was not a woman who would bear pity, 
 and that she was best left thus in solitude. 
 
 Like a caged animal she paced to and fro the 
 long length of the stone terrace. 
 
 She was all alone. 
 
 The flower-like radiance of the declining day 
 shone everywhere around, the birds sang, the 
 dreamy bells rang in the Ave Maria from hill to 
 hill, all was so still, so peaceful, so beautiful ; 
 yet with the setting of the sun, his life might 
 go out in darkness. 
 
 In her great misery, her soul was purified. 
 The fire that consumed her burned away the 
 dross of the world, the alloy of selfishness and 
 habit and vain passions* " Oh, God ! give me 
 his life, and I will give him mine ! " she cried in 
 her heart all through those terrible hours ; and 
 yet recoiled in terror from the uselessness and 
 daring of her prayer. What had she ever done 
 that she could merit its fulfilment ? 
 
 He might have been hers, all hers; and she 
 had loved the base things of a worldly great- 
 ness better than himself. And now he lay 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 377 
 
 dying there, as the sun dropped westward and 
 night came. 
 
 She felt no chill of evening. She felt neither 
 hunger nor thirst. Crowds of weeping people 
 hung ahout in the gardens below. She heard 
 nothing that passed round her, save the few 
 words of her old friend, when from time to time 
 he came and told her that there was no change. 
 
 The moon rose, and its light fell on the stone 
 of the terrace, and through the vast deserted 
 chambers opening from it ; on the grey worn 
 marbles of the statues, and on the pale angels of 
 the frescoes. 
 
 It was ten o'clock : the chimes of the convent 
 above on the mountains told every hour. Un- 
 ceasingly she paced to and fro, to and fro, like 
 some mad, or wounded creature. The silence and 
 serenity of the night, the balmy fragrance of it, 
 and the silvery light, were so much mockery of 
 her wretchedness. She had never thought that 
 
 there could be agony like this and yet from 
 
 heaven no sign ! 
 
 Nearly another hour had passed before her 
 friend approached her again. She caught the 
 
378 IN A WINTER CJTY. 
 
 sound of his step in the darkness ; her heart 
 stood still ; her hlood was changed to ice, frozen 
 with the deadliness of the most deadly fear on 
 earth; she could only look at him with wide- 
 opened, strained, blind eyes. 
 
 For the first time he smiled : 
 
 " Take comfort," he said, softly. * He has 
 fallen asleep, he is less exhausted, they say that 
 he may live. How cold you are ! this night will 
 kill you ! " 
 
 She dropped down upon her knees on the 
 stone pavement, and all her bowed frame was 
 shakened by convulsive weeping. 
 
 He drew aside in reverence and left her alone 
 in the light of the moon. 
 
 When midnight came hope was certain. 
 
 The sleep still lasted ; the fever had abated, 
 the cold chills had not returned. 
 
 She called her old friend to her out into the 
 terrace. 
 
 " I will go now. Send to me at daybreak and 
 keep my secret." 
 
 " May I tell him nothing ? " 
 
 " Tell him to come to me when he is able." 
 
IN A WINTEE CITY. 379 
 
 " Nothing more ? " 
 
 " No ; nothing. He will know * 
 
 " But " 
 
 She turned her face to him in the full moon- 
 light, with the tears of her joy coursing down 
 her cheeks, and he started at the change in her 
 that this one night of suffering had wrought. 
 
 " No, say nothing more. But hut you 
 shall see what my atonement shall he, and my 
 thankfulness." 
 
 Then she went away from him softly in the 
 darkness and the fragrance of the April night. 
 The Due looked after the lights of her carriage 
 with a mist over his own eyes, but he shrugged 
 his shoulders with a sigh. 
 
 " Who can ever say that he knows a woman ! 
 Who can ever predcit what she will not say, 
 or will not do, or will not he ! " he murmured, 
 as he turned and went within to watch beside 
 the bed of his friend, as the stars grew clearer 
 and the dawn approached. 
 
CHAFTEK Xltt 
 
 A MONTH later Paolo della Rocca led his 
 wife through what had once been his mother's 
 chambers at Palestrina, and which were now 
 prepared for her, with all their wide windows 
 unclosed and looking out to the rose and golden 
 afternoon glories of the bright south-west. 
 
 In the little oratory, which opened out of the 
 bed-chamber, there was hung an altar picture ; it 
 was the picture of San Cipriano il Mago. 
 
 " Take it as my marriage gift," he murmured 
 to her. "You threw away your magic wand 
 and renounced the world for me, oh, my love, 
 my love ! God grant you the Saints' reward ! " 
 
IN A WINTER CIT*. 381 
 
 She laid her hands upon his heart, and leant 
 Jier cheek upon them. 
 
 " My reward is here." 
 
 " And you will never repent t* 
 
 " Did Cyprian repent when he broke his 
 earthly bonds and gained eternal life ? Once 
 I was blind, but now I see. The world is 
 nothing : Love is enough ! " 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 "C'EST etonnant !" murmured the Due de St. 
 Louis the same evening softly to himself, stand- 
 ing on the steps of the Hotel Murat, after 
 assisting in the morning at those various civil 
 ceremonies and impediments with which our 
 beloved Italy, in her new character as a nation 
 of Free Thought, does her best to impede and 
 deter all such as cling to so old-world and 
 pedantic a prejudice as marriage. 
 
 The denoiiinent of the drama which he 
 himself had first set in action had fallen upon 
 him like a thunder-bolt. He had had no con- 
 ception of what would happen. He had thought 
 to enrich his friend by one of the finest fortunes 
 
JN A WINDER CITY. 383 
 
 in Europe, and lo ! the Due remained in an 
 amazement and a sense of humiliation from which 
 he could not recover. 
 
 " C'est etonnant ! " he murmured again and 
 again. " Who would ever have believed that 
 Miladi was a woman to heggar herself and play 
 the romance of the ' world lost for love ? ' 
 If I had only imagined if I had only dreamed ! 
 I will never propose a marriage to any living 
 being again ; never." 
 
 " You have nothing to be so remorseful about, 
 Due," said Lord Clairvaux, with a sigh, himself 
 utterly exhausted by all the law work that he 
 had been obliged to go through. "It is very 
 funny certainly she of all women in the world ! 
 But they are happy enough, and he really is the 
 only living*creature that ever could manage her. 
 If anybody had ever told me that any man 
 would change Hilda like that ! " 
 
 " Happy ! " echoed M. de St. Louis, with his 
 delicate and incredulous smile. He was a man 
 who had no delusions ; he was perfectly aware 
 that there were no marriages that were happy ; 
 some were calm, this was the uttermost, and 
 
384 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 to remain calm required an immense income ; 
 money alone was harmony. 
 
 Lord Clairvaux lighted a very big cigar, and 
 grumbled that it had been horrible to have to 
 leave England in the Epsom month, but that 
 he thanked goodness that it was the last of 
 her caprices that he would be worried with ; and 
 he hoped that this Italian would like them when 
 he had had a year or two of them. 
 
 " I don't know, though, but what it is the only 
 sensible caprice she ever did have in her life; 
 eh?" he added; "except buying Escargot and 
 giving him to me after the races you remem- 
 ber ? Hang it, I've never seen such a Chantilly 
 before or since as that was ! " 
 
 "We never do see such a race as the one 
 that we happen to win," murmured M. de St. 
 Louis. 
 
 " Of course it's an awful cropper to take, and 
 all that ; but I'm not sure but what she's done 
 a wise thing, though all the women are howling 
 at her like mad," continued Lord Clairvaux; 
 " a woman can't live for ever on chiffon* , you 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 385 
 
 " Most women can admirably. They buy 
 at eighty as much white hair, the coiffeurs 
 tell me, as they buy blonde or black at 
 twenty." 
 
 " Ah, but they can't, if they have a bit of 
 heart or mind in them. Hilda has both." 
 
 " The case is so rare I could not prescribe 
 for it let us hope Miladi's own prescription 
 will suit her," said the Due, whose serene good- 
 humour was still slightly ruffled. 
 
 " Well, she always was all extremes and con- 
 traries," said Lord Clairvaux. " You never 
 could say one minute what she wouldn't do the 
 next. By George ! you know there is nothing 
 too odd for her to go in for ; I should not 
 wonder an atom if when we come here two or 
 three years hence, we find her worshipping a 
 curly Paolino, seeing to the silkworms, and 
 studying wine-making : she's really tried ever- 
 thing else, you know." 
 
 " Everything except happiness ? Well, very 
 few of us get any chance of trying that, or 
 would appreciate it if we did get it. Happi- 
 ness," pursued the Due pensively, " must, afte? 
 
 G 
 
386 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 all, be almost as monotonous as discontent- 
 when one is used to it. It is comforting to 
 think so ; for there is very little of it. I cannot 
 realize Miladi amongst the babies and the wine- 
 presses ; but you may be right." 
 
 " Well, you know she's tried everything else,'* 
 repeated Lord Clairvaux. "It will be like 
 Julius Caesar and his cabbage -garden." 
 
 " You mean Diocletian," said the Due. " Do 
 you leave to-night ? We may as well go as far as 
 Paris together.' 
 
 And he turned back into the hotel to bid 
 farewell to Madame Mila. 
 
 Madame Mila, who had made the religious 
 and civil ceremonies gorgeous in the last new 
 anomalous anachronisms, with a classic and cling- 
 ing dress, quite Greek in its cut, covered all 
 over with the eyes out of peacocks' feathers, 
 and a cotte de maille boddice, stiff as paste- 
 board, with gold and silver embroideries, was 
 n3w on the point of departure from the Winter 
 City across the Mont Cenis, and was covered up 
 in the most wonderful of hooded cloaks trimmed 
 trith the feathers of the Russian diver and the 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 387 
 
 grebe ; about one hundred and fifty birds, happy, 
 peaceful, and innocent under their native skies, 
 had died to trim the wrap, and it would probably 
 be worn about half-a-dozen times; for feathers 
 are so very soon tumbled, as everybody knows, 
 
 " They are quite mad, both of them ! " said 
 the little lady, giving her small fingers in adieu, 
 and turning to see that Maurice had all the 
 things she wanted, and was duly hooking them 
 on to her ceinture of oxydised silver. 
 
 She travelled with her two maids, a courier, 
 and a footman, but none of them did as much 
 hard work as the indefatigable Maurice. 
 
 " Perhaps, Madame," said the Due, who in- 
 deed thought so himself ; but was not going to 
 admit it too strongly of two persons who, despite 
 their lamentable weakness, remained his fa- 
 vourites. " But if a few people were not mad 
 occasionally there would be no chance for the 
 sanity of the world.*' 
 
 " Well, they will repent horribly, that is one 
 comfort; she most of all," said Madame Mila, 
 with asperity. " She ought to have been prevented ; 
 treated for lunacy, you know; in France they 
 
388 IN A WINTER CITY. 
 
 would have managed it at once with a conseil 
 de famille. Maurice, you are screwing the 
 top of that flacon on all wrong do take more 
 care ! She will repent horribly, but she don't 
 see it now. Of course if she had had to lose 
 the jewels they would have brought her to reason. 
 As it is she don't in the least realise the horrible 
 tiling that she's done ; not in the least, not in 
 the least ! And the idea of going to his villa 
 to-day ! So unusual you know ; so positively 
 improper ! So utterly contrary to all custom ! 
 Vv T hen I said to her, too, that she wouldn't 
 be able even to afford Worth, she laughed, 
 and answered, that she would have one dress 
 from him every year for old friendship's sake 
 for the Palestrina vintage balls, and that he 
 would be sure to embroider her the loveliest 
 Bacchic symbolisms and put the cone of the 
 thyrsus for buttons ! only fancy ! She could 
 actually jest about that ! How miserable she 
 will be in three months when she has come back 
 to her senses ; and how miserable she will make 
 kimf" 
 Chere comtesse," said the Due, taking up 
 
IN A WINTER CITY. 389 
 
 his hat and cane, " everybody repents everything. 
 It is a law of Fate. The only difference is 
 that some people repent pleasantly, and some 
 unpleasantly. Let us hope that our beautiful 
 Duchesse will repent pleasantly. Madame, j'ai 
 Thonneur de vous saluer Bon voyage ; an 
 
 revoir." 
 
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 L,cur<ies. Translated by ERNEST A. ViZETELLY. 
 
 Rome. Translated by ERNEST A. ViZETELLY. 
 
 Paris. Translated by ERNEST A. VIZETELLY. 
 
 Fruitfulness (F6condit4). Translated and Edited, with an Introduction, by E. A. ViZF/rr.LLY. 
 
 Work. Translated by ERNEST A. VIZETELLV. -^April. 
 
 With Zola in England. By ERNEST A. VIZETELLY. With Four Portraits. Crown Svo. cloth. %r. 6 /. 
 
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 Qnips and Quiddities." By W. D. ADAMS? 
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 Translated by HENRY ATTWELL 
 Poetical Ingenuities. By W. T. DOBSON. 
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 W. 8. Gilbert's Plays. Three Series. 
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 Animals and their Masters. By Sir A HELPS. 
 Social Pressure. By Sir A. HELPS. 
 Autocrat of Breakfast-Table. By O. W. HOLMES. 
 
 Curiosities of Criticism. By H. }. JENNINGS. 
 Pencil and Palette. By R. KEMPT. 
 Little Essays: from LAMB'S LETTERS. 
 Forensic Anecdotes. By JACOB LARVVOOD. 
 
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 Ourselves. By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 Witch StorieB. By E. LYNN LINTON. 
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 Now Paul and Virginia. By W. H. MALLOCK. 
 Muses of Mayfair. Edited by H. C. PRNN:- LI. 
 Thoreau : His Life and Aims. By II. A. l',\. ;;-.. 
 Pack on Pegasus. By H. C. PENNELL. 
 Pegasus Re-saddled. By H. C. PENNKLL. 
 Puniana. By Hon. HUGH ROWLEY. 
 More Puniana. By Hon. HUGH ROWLEY. 
 
 By Stream and Ssa. By WILLIAM SENIOR. 
 Leaves from a Naturalist's Note-Book. By Dr. 
 
 ANDREW WILSON. 
 
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 Scenes of Country Life. By EDWARD JESSH. 
 La Mort d'Arthur : Selections from M ALI.ORV. 
 
 Songs for Sailors. By W. C. BENNETT. 
 Lives of the Necromancers. By W. GODWIN. 
 
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 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 Tale for a Chimney Corner. By LEIGH HUNT. 
 
 The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope. 
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 Dr. Palliser's Patient. By GRANT ALLEN I Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. M. E. COLP.RinCK. 
 
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 The Journal of Maurice de Guerin 
 The Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb. 
 Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare. 
 By W. S. LANDOR. 
 
 Christie Johnstone. By CHARLES READS. 
 Peg Woffington. By CHARLES READE. 
 
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 ironoiny. By BRILLAT-SAVARIN. The Essays of Elia. By CHARLES LAMB. 
 
 Anecdotes of the Clergy. By JACOB LARWOOD. 
 
 The Epicurean, &c. By THOMAS MOORK. 
 
 Plays by RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. 
 
 Gulliver's Travels, &c. By Dean SWIFT. 
 
 Thomson's Seasons. Illustrated. 
 
 White's Natural History of Selborne. 
 
 Gastronomy. By BRILLAT-S/ 
 
 Robinson Crusoe. Illustrated by G. CRUIKSHANK 
 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and The Professor 
 
 at the Breakfast-Table. By O. W. HOLMES. 
 Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal. 
 
 Whims and Oddities. By THOMAS HOOD. 
 Leigh Hunt's Essays. Edited by E. OLLIER. 
 
 The Barber's Chair. By DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 POPULAR SIXPENNY NOVELS. 
 
 The Dead Secret. By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 The New Magdalen. By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 He'd in Bondage. By OUIDA. 
 Moths. By OUIDA. 
 Under Two Flags. By OUIDA. 
 By Proxy. ByjAMES PAYN. 
 feg Woffington ; and Christie Johnstone. By 
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 The Cloister and the Hearth. By CHARLES 
 Never Too Late to Mend. By CHARLES READE. 
 Hard Cash. By CHARLES READE. 
 The Old Factory. By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 New Arabian Nights. By R. L. STEVENSON. 
 Puck. By OUIDA. 
 A Son of "Hagar. By HALL CAINS. 
 The Orange Girl. By WALTER BESANT. [May. 
 All Sorts and Conditions of Men. By WALTER 
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 The Golden Butterfly. By WALTER BESANT 
 The Deemster. Bv HALL CAINE. 
 The Shadow of a Crime. By HALL CAINE. 
 Antonina. By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 The Moonstone. By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 The Woman in White. By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane. London, W.C. 27 
 
 THE PICCADILLY NOVELS. 
 
 LIBRARY EDITIONS OF NovKr.s.uiany Illustrated, crown 8vo, cloth extra, 35. 6d. each. 
 
 By Mrs. ALEXANDER. 
 
 Valerie's Fato. 
 A Life Interest. 
 Mona's Choice. . 
 By Woman's Wit. 
 The Cost of Her Pride. 
 
 Barbara. 
 
 A Fight with Fate. 
 A Golden Autumn. 
 Mrs.Crichton'sCreditor. 
 The Step-mother. 
 By F. M. ALLEN. Green as Grass. 
 By GRANT ALLEN 
 I Babylon " " 
 
 The Great Taboo. 
 Dumarcsq's Daughter. 
 Duchess of Powysland. 
 Elcod Royal. 
 I. Greet's Masterpiece. 
 The Scallywag. 
 At Market Value. 
 Under Sealed Orders. 
 
 Fhillstia. 
 
 Strange Stories. 
 
 For Maimie's Sake, 
 
 In all Shades. 
 
 The Beckoning Hand. 
 
 The Devil's Die. 
 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 
 The Tents of Shem. 
 
 By M. ANDERSON. Othello's Occupation. 
 
 By EDWIN L. ARNOLD. 
 Pbra the Phoenician. | Constable of St. Nicholas. 
 
 By ROBERT BARR. 
 In a Steamer Chair. i A Woman Intervenes. 
 From Whose Bourne. | Revenge ! 
 
 By FRANK BARRETT. 
 Woman of IronBracelets. I Under a Strange Kask. 
 Fettered for Life. A Missing Witness. 
 
 The Harding Scandal. | Was She Justified ? 
 
 By ' BELLE.' Vashtl and Esther. 
 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 
 Ready- MoneyMortiboy 
 My Little Girl. 
 With Harp and Crown. 
 This Son of Vulcan. 
 The Golden Butterfly. 
 The Monks of Theleina. 
 
 By Celia's Arbour. 
 Chaplain of the Fleet. 
 The Seamy Side. 
 The Case of Mr. Lucraft. 
 In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years Tenant. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 All Sort* & Conditions. 
 The Captains' Room. 
 All in a Garden Fair. 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 Uncle Jack. | Holy Rose 
 World Went Well Then. 
 Children of Gibeon. 
 Herr Paulus. 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 To Call Her Mine. 
 The Revolt of Man. 
 The Bell of St. Paul's. 
 
 Armorel of Lyonesse. 
 S. Katharine's bv Tower 
 Verbena Camellia, &c. 
 The Ivory Gate. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 Avarice. 
 
 Dreams of 
 
 In Deacon's Orders. 
 
 The Master Craftsman. 
 
 The City of Refuge. 
 
 A Fountain Sealed. 
 
 The Changeling. 
 
 The Charm. 
 
 By AMBROSE BIERCE-InMldstof Life. 
 By HAROLD BINDLOSS.Ainslie's Ju-Ju. 
 
 ByM. McD. BOD KIN. -Dora Myrl. 
 By PAUL BOURGET. A Living Lie. 
 By J. D. BRAYSHAW. Slum Silhouettes. 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN 
 
 The New Abelard. 
 Matt. | Rachel Dene 
 Master of the Mine. 
 The Heir of Linne. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Red and White Heather. 
 Lady Kilpatrick. 
 
 Shadow of the Sword. 
 
 A Child of Nature. 
 
 God and the Man. 
 
 Martyrdom of Madeline 
 
 Love Me for Ever. 
 
 Annan Water. 
 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 
 The Charlatan. 
 
 R. W. CHAMBERS.-The King in Yellow. 
 
 By J. M.CH APPLE. The Minor Chord. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 Shadow of a Crime. | Deemster. | Son of Hagar. 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE.-By Rise of River. 
 
 By ANNE COATES.-Rie's Diary. 
 
 By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 The Red Sultan. | The Burden of Isabel. 
 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 Blacksmith fc Scholar. I You Play me False. 
 The Village Comedy. | Midnight to Midnight. 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Armadale. I AfterDark. 
 No Name. Antonina 
 Basil. | Hide and Seek. 
 The Dead Secret. 
 Queen of Hearts. 
 My Miscellanies. 
 
 The Woman in White. 
 The Law and the Lady. 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 The Moonstone. 
 Man and Wife. 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS continued. 
 Miss or Mrs. ? Jezebel's Daughter. 
 
 The New Magdalen. The Black Robe. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. Heart and Science. 
 The Two Destinies. The Evil Qeuins. 
 
 'I Say No.' Tiie Legacy of Cain. 
 
 Little Novels. A Rogue's Life. 
 
 The Fallen Leaves. Blind Love. 
 
 M. J. COLQUHOUN.-Everyln^h Soldier 
 By E. H. COOPER. Geoflory Hamilton. 
 By V. C. COTES. Two Girls on a Barge. 
 
 By C. E. CRADDOCK. 
 The Prophet o' the Great Smoky Mountains. 
 His Vanished Star. 
 
 By H. N. CRELLIN. 
 Romances of the Old Seraglio. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By S. R. CROCKETT and others. 
 Tales of Our Coast. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER. 
 
 The Real Lady Hilda. 
 Married or Single 1 
 Two Masters. 
 In theKinfidom of Kerry 
 Interference. 
 A Third Person, 
 Beyond the Pale. 
 Miss Baliuaine's Past. 
 
 Diana Barrington. 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 
 A Family Likeness. 
 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 
 Mr. Jorvis. 
 
 Village Tales. 
 
 Some One Else. | Jason. 
 
 Infatuation. 
 By W. CYPLES. Hearts of Gold. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist ; or. Port Salvation. 
 
 H. C. DAVIDSON. Mr. Sadler's Daughters 
 
 By E. DAWSON.-The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 By J. DE MILLE. A Castle in Spain. 
 
 By J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. 
 By HARRY DE WINDT. 
 True Tales of Travel and Adventure. 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 
 Tales cf Terror. 
 Chronicles cf Michasl 
 Danevitch. [Detective. 
 Tyler Tatlock, Private 
 
 Man from Manchester. 
 Records of Vincent Trill 
 The Mystery of 
 Jamaica Terrace. 
 
 Deacon Brodie. 
 By RICHARD DOWL1NG. 
 Old Corcoran's Money. 
 
 By A. CONAN DOYLE. 
 The Finn of Gird!e stone. 
 
 By S. JEANNETTE DUNCAN. 
 A Daughter of To-day. I Vernon's Aunt. 
 By A. EDWARDES. A Plaster Saint. 
 By G. S. EDWARD5. Snazelleparilla. 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN 
 
 Cursed by a Fortune. 
 The Case of Ailsa Gray 
 Commodore Junk. 
 The New Mistress. 
 Witness to the Deed. 
 The Tiger Lily. 
 The White Virgin. 
 Black Blood. 
 Double Cunning. 
 Bag cf Diamonds, &c. 
 
 A Fluttered Dovecote. 
 King of the Castle 
 Master of Ceremonies. 
 Eve at the Wheel, As; 
 The Man with a Shadow 
 One Maid's Mischief. 
 Story of Antony Grace. 
 This Man's Wife. 
 In Jeopardy. In-'n?. 
 A Woman Worth Win- 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD.-FaUlZero 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 
 One by One. Ropes of Sand. 
 
 A Dog and his Shadow. Jack Doyle's Daughter. 
 
 A Real Queen. 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 
 AStrange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder 
 
 By PAUL GAULOT. The Red Shuts. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 Robin Gray. I The Golden Shaft. 
 
 Loving a Dream. The Braes of Yarrow. 
 
 Of High Degree 
 
a8 CHATTO & WINDUS. Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVKLS continued. 
 
 By E. GLANV1LLE. 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Golden Rock. 
 
 Fair Colonist | Fossicker I Tales from the Veld. 
 
 By E. J. GOODMAN. 
 The Fate of Herbert Wayne. 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
 Ked Spider. ; Eve. 
 
 CECIL GRIFFITH. -Corinthia Marazion. 
 
 By A. CLAVERING GUNTER. 
 A Florida Enchantment. 
 
 By OWEN MALL. 
 The Track of a Storm. | Jetsam. 
 By COSMO HA MIL 
 Glamour of Impossible. | Throu-rh a Keyhole. 
 
 By COSMO HAMILTON 
 
 r of Impossible. | Throu-rh a Ke 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By BRET HARTE. 
 
 By Sir A. HELPS. Ivan de Biron. 
 
 By I. HENDERSON. Agatha Page. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 
 Dorothy's Double. I The Queen's Cup. 
 
 By HEADON HILL. 
 Zambra the Detective. 
 By JOHN HILL. The Common Ancestor. 
 
 By TIGHE HOPKINS. 
 'Twixt Love and Duty. | Nugents of Carriconna. 
 
 The Incomplete Adventurer. 
 VICTOR HUGO. -The Outlaw of Iceland. 
 FERGUS HUME.-Ladv from Nowhere. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 A Mental *5tru*<rle. , A Maiden all Forlorn. 
 Lady Verner's Flight. The Coming of Chloe. 
 The Red-House Mystery i Nora Creina. 
 The Three Graces. An Anxious Moment. 
 
 Professor s Experiment. I Aprils Lady. 
 A Point of Conscience. I Peter s Wife. I Lovice. 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 The Leaden Casket. I Self-Condemned. 
 That Other Person. Mrs. Juliet. 
 
 By C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE. 
 Honour of Thieves. 
 By R. ASHE K I NG.-A Drawn Game. 
 
 By GEORGE LAMBERT. 
 The President of Bora via. 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLET1ER. 
 Madame Sans Gene. 
 By ADAM LILBURN. A Tragedy in Marble 
 
 By HARRY LINDSAY. 
 Fhoda Roberts. | The Jacobite. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. -Gideon Fleyce. 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 On Brink of a Chasm. 
 The Siren. 
 
 The Way of a Woman. 
 A Son of Ishmael. 
 
 A Waif of the Plains. 
 A Ward of the Golden 
 Gate. [Springs. 
 A Sappho of Green 
 Col. Starbottle s Client. 
 Susy. | Sally Dows. 
 Bell-Ringer of Ansel's. 
 Tales of Trail and Town 
 By JULIAN \ 
 Garth. | Dust. 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 Sebastian Stroma. 
 Fortune s Fool. 
 
 A Prot:g(Je of Jack 
 Ham tins. 
 Clarence. 
 Barker's Luck. 
 Devils Ford, [celsior. 1 
 The Crusade of the ' Ex- 
 Three Partners. 
 Gabriel Cjnroy. 
 1AWTHORNE. 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 David Poindexter s Dis- 
 appearance. 
 Spectre of Camera. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 Under which Lord? 
 My Love ! ' | lone. 
 Taston Carew. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 With a Silk en Thread. 
 The World Well Lost. 
 By JUSTIN 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 Linley Rochford. 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 Camiola 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 My Enemy s Daughter. 
 Miss Misanthrope. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn 
 Dundas. 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 An Octave of Friends. 
 
 MCCARTHY. 
 
 Donna Quixote. 
 Maid of Athens. 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 The Dictator. 
 Red Diamonds. 
 The Riddle Bing. 
 The Three Disgraces. 
 
 By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY. 
 
 A London Legend. | The Royal Christopher 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 Heather and Snow. i Phantastes. / 
 W. H. MALLOCK.-The New Republic 
 P. &V. MARGUERITTE. -The Disaster. 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune. * 
 
 In an Iron Grip. 
 
 Dr. Rumsey's Patient. 
 
 The Voice of theCharme 
 
 An Adventuress. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. 
 This Stage of Fools. | Cynthia. 
 
 By BERTRAM MITFORD. 
 The Gun-Kunner. I The King's Assegai. 
 
 LuckofGerardRidgeley. | Rensh. Fanning '*Quest. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 Maid Marian and Robin Hood. I Golden Idol. 
 Basile the Jester. | Young Lochinvar. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 A Life's Atonement. The Way of the World. 
 Joseph's Coat. BobMartin's Little Girl 
 
 Coals of Fire. Time s Revenges. 
 
 Old Blazer s Hero. A Wasted Crime. 
 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. In Direst Peril. 
 A Model Father. Mount Despair. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. A Cap.'ul o' Mais 
 A Bit of Human Nature, i Tales in Prose & Versa 
 First Person Singular. ! A Race for Millions. 
 Cynic Fortune. ! This Little World. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 The Bishops' Bible. I Paul Jones a Alias. 
 One Traveller Returns. | 
 
 By HUME NISBET.-' BailUp 1 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Ann's. I Billy Belle w. 
 
 Miss Wentworth's Idea. 
 
 By G. OHNET. 
 A Weird Gift. ' | Love's Depths. 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT.-The Sorceiesi. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. In a Winter City. 
 
 Strathmore. I Chandos. Friendship. 
 Under Two Flags. 
 Idalia. [Gage. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaines 
 Tricotrin. | Puck. 
 Folie Farine. 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 Pa?carel. | Signa. 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 Two Wooden Shoes. 
 
 The Waters of Edera. 
 By MARGARET A. PAUL. 
 i Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 ! Lost Sir Massmgberd. . The Talk of the Town. 
 i A County Family. 
 Less Black than We're \ 
 
 Painted. 
 A Confidential Agent. ] 
 
 A Grape from a Thorn. | . ., 
 
 In Peril and Privation. ] A Irving Patient. 
 M eatery of Mirbridge. A Modern Dick Whit- 
 Waiter s Word, tington. 
 High Spirits. (By Proxy. 
 By WILL PAYNE. -Jerry the Dreamer. 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker, i Mrs. Tregaskiss. 
 Christina Chard. I Nulma. Madame Izan. 
 
 By E. C. PRICE. 
 Valentina. | Foreigners. | Mrs. Lancaster's Rival. 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 Weird Stories. | A Rich Man's Daughter. 
 
 By AMELIE RIVES. 
 Barbara Dering. ! Meriel. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 The Hands of Justice. I Woman in the Daw*. 
 
 Moths 
 Pipistrello. | Aria-1 1. 
 A Village Commune. 
 Bimbi. | Wand*. 
 Frescoes. | Othmar. 
 In Maremma. 
 Syrlm. | Guilderoy. 
 Santa Barbara. 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 For Cash Oi'ly. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 The Word and the Will. 
 Runny Stories. 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 29 
 
 By ANNIE THOMAS. The Sirens Web. 
 
 BERTHA THOMAS. The Violin Player 
 
 By FRANCES E. TROLLOPE 
 
 Like Ships upon Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 Anne Furness. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 The Way we Live Now. I Scarborough s Family. 
 Frau Frohmann. The Land-Leaguers. 
 
 Marion Fay. 
 
 By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 
 
 Stories from Foreign Novelists. 
 
 THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued. 
 
 By ALBERT ROSS. -A Sugar Princess. 
 By HERBERT RUSSELL. True Blue 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 Peg Woffington; and ~ 
 
 ristie Johnstone. 
 Hard Cash. 
 Cloister & the Hearth. 
 Never Too Late to Mend 
 The Course of True 
 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 
 Love Little, Love Long. 
 
 The Double Marriage. 
 
 Foul Play. 
 
 Put Y'rself in His Place 
 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 
 A Simpleton. 
 A Woman Hater. 
 The Jilt, A: otherStories : 
 & Good Stories of Man. 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 Readiana; and Bible 
 Characters. 
 
 Love ; and Single 
 heart & Doubleface. 
 Autobiography of a 
 Thief; Jack of all 
 Tiades; A Hero and 
 a Martyr ; and The 
 
 Wandering Heir. 
 
 J. RUNCIMAN.-Skippers and Shellbacks. 
 By VV. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 ily Shipmate Louise. 
 Alone on Wide Wide Sea. 
 The Phantom Death. 
 Is He the Man ? 
 Good Ship 'Mohock.' 
 The Convict Ship. 
 
 Round the Galley-Fire. 
 In the Middle Watch. 
 On the Fo'k'sle Head 
 A Voya.fi e to the Cape. 
 Book for the Hammock. 
 Mysteryof Ocean Star' 
 Jnny Harlowe. 
 An Ocean Tragedy. 
 A Tale of Two Tunnels. 
 
 Heart of Oak. 
 
 The Tale of the Ten. 
 
 The Last Entry. 
 
 The Death Ship. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. -Drift of Fate. 
 
 BAYLE ST. JOHN.-A Levantine Family 
 
 By ADELINE SERGEANT. 
 
 Dr. Endicott's Experiment. 
 Under False Pretences. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIM5. 
 
 Dagonet Abroad 
 
 Once Upon a Christmas 
 
 Time. 
 Without the Limelight. 
 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 In London's Heart 
 Mary Jare Married. 
 The Small-part Lady. 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 
 Without Love or Licence. I The Outsider. 
 
 The Master of Rathkelly. Beatrice & Benedick. 
 
 Long Odds. ! A Racing Rubber. 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 A Secret of the Sea. I A Minion of the Moon. 
 The Grey Monk. Secret Wyvern Towera. 
 
 The Master of Trenance | The Doom of Siva. 
 
 The Web of Fata 
 The Strange Experiences of Mr. Verschoyle. 
 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 A Fellow of Trinity. I The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 The Junior Dean. | The Wooing of May 
 
 Master of St.Benedict's. I A Tragic Honeymoon. 
 To his Own Master. | A Proctor s Wooing. 
 Gallantry Bower. Fortune's Gp.te. 
 
 In Face of the World. Bonnie Maggie Lauder. 
 Orchard Damerel. | Mary Unwin. 
 
 By JOHN STAFFORD.-Dorisandl 
 By R. STEPHENS.-The Cruciform Mark. 
 R. A. STERNDALE.-The Afghan Knife. 
 R. L. STEVENSON. -The Suicide Club. 
 
 By FRANK STOCKTON. 
 The Young Master of Hj son Kail. 
 
 By SUNDOWNER.-Toldby the Taffrail. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 
 Choice Works. 
 Library of Humour. 
 The Innocents Abroad. 
 Roughing It ; and The 
 
 Innocents at Home. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 TheAmerican Claimant. 
 AdventuresTomSawyer 
 Tom Sawyer Abroad. 
 Torn Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Pudd'nhead Wilson. 
 The Gilded Age. 
 Prince and the Pauper. 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Adventures of 
 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 A Yankee at the Court 
 
 of King Arthur. 
 Stolen White Eleph?at 
 1,000,000 Bank note. 
 
 C. C. F.-TYTLER. Mistress Judith. 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 WhatSha CameThrough , Mrs Carmichaela God- 
 
 Buried Diamonds. 
 The Blackball Ghosts. 
 The Macdonald Lass. 
 Witch- Wife. | Sapphira 
 
 desses. | Lady BeL. 
 Rachel Langton. 
 A Honeymoon's Eclipse. 
 A Young Dragon. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 
 The Queen against Owen. 
 
 By ALBERT D. VANDAM. 
 A Court Tragedy. 
 
 By E. A. VIZETELLY.-The Scorpion. 
 By F. WARDEN. Joan, the Curate. 
 
 By CY WARMAN.-Express Messenger. 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 For Honour and Life. 
 A Woman Tempted Him 
 
 The Old Factory. 
 Red Ryvington. 
 Ralph Norbreck's Trust 
 Trash-;! on ey 
 Sons of Belia'. 
 Roy of Roy's Conr*. 
 With the Red Eag'e. 
 Strange Crimes (True 
 Stories). 
 
 Her Two Millions. 
 Two Pinches of Snuff. 
 Nigel Foitescue. 
 Bir.'h Dene. 
 The Phantom City. 
 A Quaer Rac<5. 
 Ben Clough. 
 
 By ATHA WESTBURY. 
 The Shadow of Bilton Fernbrook. 
 By C. J. WILLS. An Easy-going Fellow. 
 
 By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 
 Cavalry Life ; and Regimental Legends. 
 A Solaier's Children. 
 
 By E. ZOLA. 
 The Fortune of the Rougons. 
 Abbe Moiiret's Transgression. 
 The Conquest of PlaBsana. | Germinal. 
 The Honour of the Army 
 
 The Downfall 
 The Dream. 
 Dr. Pascal. 
 
 Money. 
 Lourdes. 
 
 His Excellency. 
 The Dram Shop. 
 Pome. | Part* 
 Fruttfulness. | Work. 
 
 The Fat and the Thin 
 
 By 'ZZ. ' A Nineteenth Century Mirac'e. 
 
 CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS. 
 
 ; Post 8vo, illustrated boards, as. each. s 
 
 By ARTEMUS WARD. 
 
 Artemua Ward Complete. 
 
 By Mrs. ALEXANDER. 
 
 Maid. Wue, or Widow Y 
 
 Blind Fate. 
 Valerie a Fate. 
 
 A Life Interest. 
 
 Mona's Choice. 
 By Woman s Wit. 
 
 By E. LESTER ARNOLD. 
 
 a the Ph<.nicjai}. 
 
 By GRAN 
 
 Philistia. | Babylon. 
 Strange Stories. 
 For Maimie's Sake. 
 In all Shades. 
 The Beckoning Hand. 
 The Devil's Die. 
 The Tents of Sham. 
 The Groat Taboo- 
 
 T ALLEN. 
 
 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 Duchess of Powysland. 
 Blood Royal. [piece. 
 Ivan Greet'a Master* 
 The Scallywag. 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 At Market Va!u. 
 UnJer Sealed Orderi. 
 
30 CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 BY FRANK BARRETT. 
 
 Found Guilty. 
 A Recoiling Vengeance. 
 For Love and Honour. 
 John Ford, &c. 
 Woman of IronBrace'ta 
 The Harding Scandal. 
 
 Fettered for Life. 
 Little Lady Linton. 
 Between Life & Death. 
 Sin of Olga Zassoulich. 
 Folly Morrison. 
 Lieut. Barnabas. 
 Honest Davie. 
 A Prodigal's Progress. 
 
 A Missing Witness. 
 
 By FREDERICK BOYLE. 
 
 Camp Notes. I Chronicles of No-man's 
 
 Savage Life. | Land. 
 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 
 Ready- Money Mortiboy By Delia's Arbour. 
 
 Chaplain of the Fleet 
 The Seamy Side. 
 The Case or Mr. Lucraft. 
 la Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Ten Years' Tenant. 
 
 My Little Girl. 
 With Harp and Crown. 
 This Son of Vulcan. 
 The Golden Butterfly. 
 The Monks of Thelema. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 All Sorts and Condi- The Bell of St. Paul's. 
 
 tioas of Men. 
 The Captains' Room. 
 Al! in a Garden Fair. 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 Uncle Jack. 
 The World Went Very 
 
 Well Then. 
 Children of Gibeon. 
 Herr Paulus. 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 
 The Holy Rose. 
 Arm or el of Lyonesse. 
 S . Ka therine s by Tower 
 Verbena Camellia te- 
 
 chanotis. 
 The Ivory Gate. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 Beyond the Dreams of 
 
 Avarice. 
 
 The Revolt of Man. 
 In Deacon's Orders. 
 
 T.I Call Her Mine. In Deacon's Orders. 
 
 The Master Craftsman. The C ity of Refuge. 
 
 By AMBROSE BIERCE. 
 
 In the Midst of Life. 
 
 BY BRET HARTE. 
 
 Caiifornian Stories. 
 Gabriel Conroy. 
 Luck of Roaring Camp. 
 An Heiress of Red Dog. 
 
 Fit 
 
 ip. | Maruja. 
 
 Phyllis of the Sierras. 
 A Waif of the Plains. 
 Ward of Golden Gate. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 Ehadow of the Sword. 
 A Child of Nature, 
 Red and the Man. 
 Love Me for Ever. 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 The Master of the Mine. 
 Annan Water. 
 
 The Martyrdom of Ma- 
 deline. 
 
 The New Abelard. 
 The Heir of Linns. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Rachel Dene. | Matt. 
 Lady Kiipatrick. 
 
 By BUCHANAN and MURRAY. 
 
 The Charlatan. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 The Shadow of a Crime. I The Deemster. 
 A Son of Hagar. 
 
 By Commander CAMERON. 
 
 The Cruise of the ' Black Prince.' 
 
 By HAYDEN CARRUTH. 
 
 The Adventures of Jones. 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE. 
 
 For the Love of a Lass. 
 
 By Mrs. ARCHER CLIVE. 
 
 Paul Fen oil. 
 
 Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife. 
 
 By MACLAREN COBBAN. 
 The Cure of Souls. | The Red Sultan. 
 
 By C. ALLSTON COLLINS. 
 The Bar Sinister. ^ 
 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 
 Sweet Anne Page. 
 Transmigration. 
 From Midnight to Mid 
 
 nigh 
 k Figt 
 
 ;ht with Fortune. 
 
 Sweet and Twenty. 
 The Village Comedy. 
 You Play me False. 
 Blacksmith and Scholar 
 Frances. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Armadale.f AfterDark. | My Miecellanie 
 
 No Name. 
 
 Antonina. 
 
 Basil. 
 
 Hide and Seek. 
 
 The Dead Secret. 
 
 Queen of Hearts. 
 
 Miss or Mrs.? 
 
 The New Magdalen. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 
 The Law and the Lady 
 
 The Two Destinies. 
 
 The Haunted Hotel. 
 
 A Rogue's Life. 
 
 By M. J. COLQUHOUN. 
 Every Inch a Soldier. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a "lair Rebel. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER. 
 
 The Woman in White. 
 The Moonstone. 
 Man and Wire. 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 The Black Robe. 
 Heart and Science. 
 ' I Say No ! ' 
 The Evil Genius. 
 Little Novels. 
 Legacy of Cain. 
 Blind Love. 
 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 Diana Barrington. 
 
 ' To Let.' 
 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 
 A Family Likeness. 
 
 A Third Person. 
 
 Village Tales and Jungle 
 
 Tragedies. 
 Two Masters. 
 Mr. Jervis. 
 The Real Lady Hilda. 
 Married or Single ? 
 Interference. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET 
 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 
 In the Grip of the Law. 
 From Information Re- 
 ceived. 
 
 Tracked to Doom. 
 Link by Link 
 Suspicion Aroused. 
 Dark Deeds. 
 Riddles Read. 
 
 The Man-Hunter. 
 Tracked and Taken. 
 Caught at Last ! 
 Wanted ! 
 Who Poisoned Hetty 
 
 Duncan ? 
 
 Man from Manchester. 
 A Detective's Triumphs 
 The Mystery of Jamaica Terrace. 
 The Chronicles of Michael Danevitch. 
 
 By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 
 A Point of Honour. | Archie Lovell. 
 
 By EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
 
 Rosy. 
 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 The New Mistress. I The Tiger Lily. 
 
 Witness to the Deed. | The White Virgin. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD. 
 Bella Donna. Second Mrs. Tillotson. 
 
 Never Forgotten. Seventy - five Brooke 
 
 Polly. Street. 
 
 Fatal Zero. The Lady of Brantome 
 
 By P. FITZGERALD and others. 
 
 Strange Secrets. 
 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 
 Olympia. 
 One by One. 
 A Real Queen. 
 Queen Cophetua. 
 
 King or Knave ? 
 Romances of the Law. 
 Ropes of Sand. 
 A Dog and his Shadow. 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 
 Prefaced by Sir BARTLE FRERE. 
 
 Pandurang Hari. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 
 A Strange Manuscript. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 
 Robin Gray. i In Honour Bound. 
 
 Fancy Free. j Flower of the Forest. 
 
 For Lack of Gold. The Braes of Yarrow. 
 
 What will World Say ? The Golden Shaft. 
 
 la Love and War. 
 For the King. 
 In Pastures Green. 
 Queen of the Meadow. 
 A Heart's Problem. 
 The Dead Heart. 
 
 Of High Degree. 
 By Mead and Stream. 
 Loving a Dream. 
 A Hard Knot. 
 Heart's Delight. 
 Blood-Money. 
 
CHATTO & W1NDUS, Publishers, til St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 31 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued, 
 
 By WILLIAM GILBERT. 
 
 James Duke. 
 
 By ERNEST GLANVILLE. 
 The Lost Heiress. I The Fossicker 
 
 A Fair Colonist. | 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD 
 Red Spider. I Eve. 
 
 By ANDREW HALLIDAY. 
 Every-day Papers. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 Garth. 
 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 Fortune's Fool. 
 Miss Cadogna. 
 Sebastian Stroine. 
 Dust. 
 
 By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. 
 Ivan de Biron. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 
 Rujub the Juggler. 
 
 By HEADON HILL. 
 
 Zambra the Detective. 
 
 By JOHN HILL. 
 
 Treason Felony. 
 
 By Mrs. CASHEL HOEY. 
 
 The Lover's Creed. 
 
 By Mrs. GEORGE HOOPER. 
 
 The House of Raby. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 Love or a. Name. 
 David Poindexter's Dis- 
 
 appearance. 
 The Spectre 
 Camera. 
 
 of the 
 
 A Maiden all Forlorn. 
 
 In Durance Vile. 
 
 Marvel. 
 
 A Mental Struggle. 
 
 A Modern Circe. 
 
 April's Lady. 
 
 Peter's Wife. 
 
 Lady Verner's Flight. 
 The Red-House Mystery 
 The Three Graces. 
 Unsatisfactory Lover. 
 Lady Patty. 
 Nora Creina. 
 Professor's Experiment. 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 
 That Other Person. I The Leaden Casket. 
 Self-Condemned. 
 
 By MARK KERSHAW. 
 
 Colonial Facts and Fictions. 
 
 By R. ASHE KING. 
 
 A Drawn Game. I Passion's Slave. 
 
 The Wearing of the Bell Barry. 
 Green.' 1 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 
 Madame Sans-Gene. 
 
 By JOHN LEYS. 
 
 The Lindsays. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 The World Well Lost. 
 Under which Lord? 
 
 Paston Carew. 
 
 My Love I ' 
 
 lone. 
 
 With a Silken Thread. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn 
 
 Dundas. 
 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 Sowin? the Wind. 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. 
 
 Gideon Fleyce. 
 
 By JUSTINMcCARTHY. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. Donna Quixote. 
 Waterdale Neighbours. "Maid of Athens. 
 My Enemy's Daughter The Comet of a Season. 
 A Fair Saxon. The Dictator. 
 
 Linley Rochford. Red Diamonds. 
 
 Miss Misanthrope. The Riddle Rinj'. 
 
 Cwniola 
 
 By HUGH MACCOLL. 
 
 Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet. 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 
 Heather and Snow. 
 
 By AGNES MACDONELL. 
 
 Quaker Cousins. 
 
 By W. H. MALLOCK. 
 
 The New Republic. 
 
 By BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRSCK. 
 
 The Man who was Good. 
 
 By JEAN MIDDLEMASS. 
 
 Touch and Go. | Mr. Dorillion. 
 
 By Mrs. MOLESWORTH. 
 
 Hathercourt Rectory. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 StoriesWeirdand Won- 1 From the Bosom of tha 
 
 derful. Deep. 
 
 The Dead Man's Secret. | 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 First Person Singular. 
 Bob Martin's LittleGirl. 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 A Capful o' Nails 
 
 A Model Father. 
 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 
 Coals of Fire. 
 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. 
 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 
 The Way of the World. 
 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 
 A Life's Atonement. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 
 One Traveller Returns. I The Bishops' Bible. 
 Paul Jones's Alias. 1 
 
 By HUME NISBET. 
 
 1 Bail Up 1 ' | Dr.Bernard St. Vincent. 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Ann's. | Billy Ballew. 
 
 By GEORGES OHNET. 
 
 Dr. Rameau. I A Weird Gift. 
 
 A Last Love. | 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 
 
 Whiteladies. I The Greatest Heiress in 
 
 The Primrose Path. | England. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. 
 
 Strathmore. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine'sGage 
 
 Tricotrin. 
 
 Puck. 
 
 Folio Farine. 
 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 
 Pascarel. 
 
 Signa. 
 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Two Lit. Wooden Shoes. 
 Moths. 
 Bimbi. 
 Pipistrello. 
 A Village Commune. 
 Wanda. 
 Othmar 
 Frescoes. 
 In Maremma. 
 Guilderoy. 
 RuifLno. 
 Syrlin. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Ouidas Wisdon 
 
 and Pathos. 
 
 Wit. 
 
 By MARGARET AGNES PAUL. 
 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 
 The Romance of a Station. 
 
 The Soul of Countess Adrian. 
 
 Out' aw and Lawmaker. | Mrs. Tregaskls 
 
 Christina Chard. 
 
32 CHATTO & VV1NDUS. Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, VV.C. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 
 Miss Maxwell s Affections. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Beatinck's Tutor. I The Talk of the Town. 
 
 I Holiday Tasks. 
 ! A Perfect Treasure. 
 j What He Cost Her. 
 I A Confidential Agent. 
 : Glow-worm Tales. 
 
 The Burnt Million. 
 ' Sunny Stories, 
 i Lost Sir Massingberd. 
 ! A Woman's Vengeance. 
 | The Family Scapegrace. 
 
 Gwendoline s Harvest. 
 i Like Father, Like Son. 
 1 Married Beneath Kim. 
 Not Wooed, but Won. 
 I Less Black than We re 
 Painted. 
 
 Some Private Views. 
 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 
 The Mystery of Mir- 
 bridge. 
 
 The Word and the Will. 
 
 A Prince of tne Blood. 
 
 Murphy s Master. 
 
 A County Family. 
 
 At Her Mercy. 
 
 Cecil's Tryst. 
 
 The Clyffards of Clyffe. 
 
 The Foster brothers. 
 
 Found Dead. 
 
 The Beet of Husbands. 
 
 Walter's Word. 
 
 Halves. 
 
 Fallen Fortunes. 
 
 Humorous Stories. 
 
 200 Rewaro. 
 
 A Marine Residence. 
 
 Mirk Abbey 
 
 By Proxy. 
 
 Under One Roof. 
 
 High Spirits 
 
 Carlyon's Year. 
 
 From Exile. 
 
 For Cash Only. 
 
 Kit. 
 
 The Canon s Ward. 
 
 A Trying Patient. 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 It is Never Too Late to 
 
 Mend. 
 
 Christie Johnstone. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Put Yourself in His 
 
 Place 
 Love Me Little, Love 
 
 Me Long. 
 The Cloister and the 
 
 Hearth. 
 
 Course of True Love. 
 The Jilt. 
 The Autobiography of 
 
 a Thief. 
 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 
 Foul Play. 
 
 The Wandering Heir. 
 
 Hard Cash. 
 
 Singleheart and Double- 
 face. 
 
 Good Stories of Man and 
 other Animals. 
 
 Peg Woffington. 
 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 
 A Simpleton. 
 
 Readiana. 
 
 A Woman-Hater. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 
 Weird Stories. i The Uninhabited House. 
 
 Fairy Water. I Ihe Mystery in Palace 
 
 Her Mother s Darling. ' Gardens. 
 The Prince of Wales a i The Nun's Cnrae. 
 Garden Party. i Idle Tales. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 
 Women are Strange. I The Woman in the Dark 
 The Hands of Justice. | 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 Round the Galley Fire. I An Ocean Tragedy. 
 On the Fo k'sle Head. | My Shipmate Louis 
 
 Alone onWideWide Sea. 
 
 Shipmate Louise 
 
 In the Middle Watch, j Alone onWideWide S( 
 A Voyage to the Cape. ! Good Ship ' Mohock. 
 A Book for the Ham- The Phantom Death. 
 
 mock. Is He the Man? 
 
 The Mystery of the | Heart of Oak. 
 
 ' Ocean Star.' j The Convict Ship. 
 
 The Romance of Jenny \ The Tale of the Ten. 
 
 Harlowe. , The Last Entry. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. 
 
 A Country Sweetheart. 
 By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 Gaslight and Daylight. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 The Ring o' Bells. I Zeph. 
 
 Mary Jane's Memoirs, j Memoirs of a Landlady. 
 
 I Scenes from the Show. 
 
 i The 10 Commandments. 
 
 i Dagonet Abroad. 
 
 i Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 
 Mary Jaae Married. 
 Tales of To day. 
 Dramas of Life. 
 Tlnkletop's Crime. 
 My Two Wives. 
 
 By ARTHUR SKETCHLEY. 
 
 A Match in the Dark. 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 
 Without Love or Licence. I The P'un;rer. 
 Beatrice and Benedick. Lome Odds 
 The Master of Rathkelly. j 
 
 By T. \V. SPEIGHT. 
 
 The Mysteries of Heron \ Back to Life. 
 
 The LoudwaterTragedy. 
 Burgo's Romance. 
 Quittance in Full. 
 
 The Golden Hoop 
 
 Hoodwinked. 
 
 By Devious Ways. 
 
 A Husband trom the Sea 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity 
 The Junior Dean. 
 Ka'ter of St.Benedict s 
 To His Own Master. 
 
 Orchard Danierel. 
 
 In the Face of the World. 
 
 The Treznlstt Diamonds. 
 
 By R. A. STERNDALE. 
 
 The Afghan Knife. 
 
 By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 New Arabian Nights. 
 
 By ROBERT SURTEES. 
 
 Haadley Cross. 
 
 By BERTHA THOMAS. 
 
 The Violin Player. 
 
 By WALTER THORNBURY. 
 
 Tales for the Marines. 
 
 By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. 
 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 By F. ELEANOR TROLLOPE. 
 
 Like Ships upon the Anne Fnrness. 
 Sea. Mabel's Progress. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 Frau Frohmanu. The American Senator. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Marion Fay. 
 Kept in the Dark. 
 The Way We Live Now 
 The Land-Leaguers. 
 
 Scarborough's 
 Family. 
 G oidenLion of Granper a 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 
 Stolen White Elephant. 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Prince and the 
 
 Pauper. 
 A Yankee at the Court 
 
 of King Arthur. 
 1.000,000 Bank- Note. 
 
 A Pleasure Trip on the 
 
 Continent. 
 The Gilded Age. 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 MarkTwain s Sketches. 
 Tom Sawyer. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 
 By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. 
 
 Mistress Judith. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 Bride s Pass | Lady Bell The Huguenot Family 
 
 Buried Diamonds. 
 St. Mango's City. 
 Noblesse Oblige. 
 Disappeared. 
 
 The Blackball Ghosts 
 What SheCasneThrough 
 Beauty and the Beast. 
 Citoyenne Jaqueline. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 
 The Queen against Owen. | Prince of Balkistan. 
 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 Trust-Moaey. 
 
 By Mrs. F. H. WILLIAMSON. 
 
 A Child Widow. 
 
 By J. S. WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life. | Regimental Legends. 
 
 By H. F. WOOD. 
 
 The Passenger from Scotland Yard. 
 The Englishman of the Rue Cam. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, Printers, 27, Pilgrim Street, London, E.C,