Moths by Ouida — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

MOT. 6. UT ue tanh te a mier, with their shutters shut; but with gorgeous autumn flowers hanging over their gilded balconies; the liveried Swisse was yawn- ing in the doorway. ‘‘ That is where your Faust-Romeo lives,” said Lady Dolly, who could never bring herself to remember the proverb, ‘‘ Let sleeping dogs lie.” ‘‘ Itis full of all kinds of beautiful things, and queer ancient things too; he is a connoisseur in his way, and everybody gives him such wonderful presents. He is making terrible scandal just now with the young grand duchess. Only to think of what you risked that day boating with him makes one shudder! You might have been compromised for life!” Vere’s proud mouth grew very scornful, but she made no reply. Yer mother looked at her and saw the scorn. ** Oh, you don’t believe me?” she said, irritably. ‘‘ Ask any- body! an hour or two alone with a man like that ruins a girl’s name forever. Of course it was morning, and open air, but still Correze is one of those persons a woman can’t be seen with, even!” Vere turned her head and looked back at the bright balconies with their hanging flowers; then she said, with her teeth shut and her lips turning white: ‘¢ {do not speak to you of Prince Zouroff’s character. Will you be so good as not to speak to me of that of M. Correze?”’ Her mother was startled and subdued. She wished she had: not woke the sleeping dog. ‘‘Tf-she be like that at sixteen, what will she be at six-and-. twenty?” she thought. ‘‘ She puts them in opposition already!” Nevertheless, she never again felt safe, and whenever she: drove along the Avenue Marigny she looked up at the house with the gilded balconies and hanging flowers to make sure that it gave no sign of life. It did not occur to her that whatever Vere might be at six= — and-twenty would be the result of her own teaching, actions, and. example. Lady Dolly had reasoned with herself that she had done right after all: she had secured a magnificent position for her daughter, was it not the first duty of a mother? If Vere could not be content with that position, and all its compensations, if she offended Heaven and the world by any ob- stinate passions or imprudent guilt, if she, in a word, with vir- tue made so easy and so gilded, should not after all be virtuous, it would be the fault of Bulmer, the fault of society, the fault of Zouroff, the fault of Correze, or of some other man, perhaps— never the fault of her mother. When gardeners plant and graft, they know very well what. will be the issue of their work; they do not expect the rose from a bulb of garlic, or look for the fragrant olive from a slip of brier; but the culturers of human nature are less wise, and they sow poison and rave in reproaches, when it breeds and brings forths its like. ‘‘The rosebud garden of girls” is a favorite theme for poets, and the maiden, in her likeness to a half-opened - blossom, is as near purity and sweetness as a human creature ean be; yet what does the world do with its opening buds?—it thrusts them in the forcing house amidst the ordure, and them (E(0) Ecomicboo S |