Moths by Ouida — page 139: what you’re looking at

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

~~ MOTHS. Pe antics. ingale. It was fortunate for him, since he sung half a note false.” ‘Since you are so tired we will go,” said her husband, when the fourth act was over, when a score of great men had bowed themselves in and out of her box, and the glasses of the whole ach had been leveled at the Russian beauty, as they termed er, ‘*Tam not so very tired now,” shesaid, wistfully. | She longed to hear that voice of Faust as she had never longed for anything. ‘*Tf you are not tired you are capricious, ma chere,” said her husband, witha laugh. _ ‘‘1 brought you here that they might oe you; they have seen you; now I am going to the club. ome.’ , Hewrapped her white feathery mantle around her, as though : it were snow that covered her, and took her away from the theater as the curtain rose. He left her to go homeward alone, and went himself to the Rue Scribe. | AN She was thankful. ** You sang false, Correze!” said mocking voices of women gayly around him in the foyer. He was soeminent, so perfect, so felicit- ously at the apex of his triumph and of art, that a momentary failure could be made a jest of without fear. ‘‘ Pardieu!”’ said Correze, with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘* Par- dieu! do yousuppose I did not knowit? A fly flew in my throat. I suppose it will be in all the papers to-morrow. That is the sweet side of fame.” He shook himself free of his tormentors, and went to his brougham as soon as his dress was changed. It was only one o'clock, and he had all Paris ready to amuse him. But he felt out of tone and out of temper with all Paris; anoth- er half-note false, and Paris would hiss him—even him. He went home to his house in the Avenue Marigny, and sent his coachman away. ‘¢The beast!’ he said to himself, as he entered his chamber: he, was thinking of Sergius Zouroff. He threw himself down in an!’ easy-chair, and sat alone lost in thought; whilst a score of sup- per-tables were the duller for his absence, and more than one woman’s heart ached, or passion fretted, at it. ‘¢Who would have thought the sight of her would have moved me so?” he said to himself, in self-scorn. ‘‘A false note}! ou] |”? em + ee ST CHAPTER XIV. In the bitter February weather all aristocratic Paris felt the gayer, because the vast Hotel Zouroff, in the Avenue du Bois, de Boulogne, had its scarlet-clad Suisse leaning on his gold-headed staff at its portals, and its tribes of liveried and unliveried lac- ueys languishing in its halls and anterooms; since these signs showed that the prince and princess were en ville, and that the comicboo Ss.