Moths by Ouida — page 112: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

108 MOTHS. pussy, to have a secret from me! And it takes such a wise head and such a long head to havea secret! It is as dangerous as a packet of dynamite to most persons.” Aloud to Lady Dolly she said only— | ‘‘So glad, dear love, oh so glad! I was quite sure with a little refiection the dear child would see the wisdom of the step we wished her to take. Jt is such an anxiety off your mind: a girl with you in the season would have harassed you terribly. Really {i do not know which is the more wearing—an heiress that one is airaid every moment will be got at by some spendthrift, or a dear little penniless creature that one is afraid will never marry at all; and, with Vere’s peculiar manners and notions, it might have been very difficult. Happily, Zouroff has only admired her lovely classic head, and has never troubled himself about what is inside it. I think she will be an astonishment to him—rather. But, to be sure, after six months in the world, she will change, as they all do.” . ‘Vere will never change,” said Lady Dolly, irritably, and with a confused guilty little glance at her friend, ‘‘ Vere will be al- eee alt an angel and half an imbecile as long as ever she ives.’ ‘‘Imbeciles are popular people,” said Lady Stoat, with a smile. ‘‘As for angels, no one cares for them much about - modern houses, except in terra cotta.” ; fs is not you who should say so,” returned Lady Dolly,. ten- erly. ‘*Oh, my dear,” answered her friend, with a modest sigh of depreciation, ‘‘I have no pretensions; I am only a poor, weak, and very imperfect creature. But one thing I may really say of myself, and that is, that 1 honestly love young girls and do my best for them; and I think not a few have owed their life’s hap- iness to me. May your Vere be of the number!” ‘‘ [ don’t think she will ever be happy,” said Lady Dolly, im- patiently, with a little confused look of guilt. She doesn’t care a bit about dress.” ‘“‘That’s a terrible facune, certainly,” assented Lady Stoat, with a smile, ‘* Perhaps, instead, she will take to politics—those serious girls often do,—or perhaps she will care about her chil- dren, Lady Dolly gave a little shudder. What was her daughter but a child? Itseemed only the other day that the little, fair baby had tumbled about among the daisies on the vicarage lawn, and oor dead Vere in his mellow gentle voice had recited, as he ooked at her, the glorious lines to his child of Coleridge. “How wretched she had been then!—how impatient of the straitened means, the narrow purse, the country home, the calm religious life! How wretched she would have been now could she have gone back to it! Yet, with the contradiction of her sex and ‘character, Lady Dolly for a moment wished with all her soul. that she had never left that narrow home, and that the child - Were now among the daisies. One day, when they were driving down the Avenue Marigny, her mother pointed out to Vere a row of lofty windows au Pree GomiG 00: SS com