Moths by Ouida — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 121 _*Oould you not leave me here?” she said, wistfully and a little timidly, as she sat at the breakfast-table. » He answered with his curt and caustic laugh. ‘*T thank you for the compliment! No, my dear, one does not go through all the weariness and folly of marriage ceremonies to leave the loveliness one has purchased s0 hardly in a week! Have patience! [I shall be tired of you soon, maybe, but not until you ‘have shown your diamonds at an imperial ball. Do not get too pale. The court will rally me upon my tyranny. You are too pale. A touch of your mother’s rouge will be advisable unless you get some color of your own.” Vere was silent. Her throat seemed to contract and choke her. She set her glass down untouched. This was her master!—this man, who would tire of her soon, and. who hade her rouge while she was yet sixteen years old! Yet his tyranny was less horrible to her than his tenderness. That night they left for Russia. : A few days later the gossip of St. Petersburg,in court and cafe, talked only of two things—the approaching arrival of the new beauty, Princess Zouroff, with the opening of the long- closed Zouroff Palace on the Newski Prospect, and the immense penalty paid in forfeit by the great tenor, Correze, to escape the last twenty nights of his engagement in that city. | ‘‘T had better forfeit half my engagement than lose my voice altogether,” said Correze, impatiently, in explanation. ‘‘The thousands of francs I can soon make again; but if the mechani- cal nightingale in my throat give way, 1 must go and break stones for my bread. No: in this atmosphere I can breathe no longer. I pay—and I go to the South.” He paid and went; and St. Petersburg was half consoled for his departure by the entry on the following day of Prince Zou- rofi, and of her whom all the world called now, and would call henceforward, Princess Vera. CHAPTER XIII. AGAIN in the month of November, exactly one year after her marriage, a tall, slender figure, clothed in white, with white furs, moved toand fro very wearily under the palms of the Villa Nelaguine on the Gulf of Villafranca, and her sister-in-law, looking wistfully at her, thought: ae ny ‘‘Thope he is not cruel; I hope not. Perhaps it is only the death of the child that has saddened her.” Vere read her thoughts and looked her in the eyes. ‘‘T am glad that the child died,” she said, simply. The Princess Nelaguine shuddered a little. ‘¢Oh, my dear,” she murmured, ‘‘ that cannot be! Donot say that; women find solace in their children when they are unhappy in all else. You have atender, fond heart; you would have——’ ‘‘T think my heart is a stone,” said the girl, in a low voice; then she added, ‘‘In the poem of ‘Aurora Leigh’ the woman Ecomicboo a cS (€(0) A ate