Moths by Ouida — page 151: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. | 44" Holy Week, she was a most edifying study. She maintained some orphans at the Princess Mary’s pet home, and she was never absent if Staffor House had a new charitable craze. She cad not go into extremes, for she had very good taste, but only said, very innocently, ‘‘ Oh, all these things are second nature te me, you know: you know my poor Vere was a clergyman.” If she did sing naughty little songs after dinner on the lawn at the Orleans, if the Sicilian attache were always rearranging pic- tures or tapestries in her drawing-rooms, if she did bet and lose and never pay, if she did go to fancy frisks in a few yards of gos- samer and her jewels, nobody ever said anything, except that she was such a dear little woman. It is sucha sensible thing to * pull yourself together” and be wise in time. Lord Jura, who was leading his old life, with Lady Dolly left out of it, stupidly and jovlessly, because he had got into the groove of it and could not get out, and who had become gloomy, taciturn, and inclined to drink more than was good for him, used to watch the comedy of Lady Dolly’s better-ordered life with a cynical savage diversion. When he had come back from his Asiatic hunting tour, which had lasted eighteen months, he had met her as men and women do meet in society, no matter what tragedies divide or hatreds rage in them; but she had seen very well that ‘‘ Jack” was lost to her forever. She did not even try to get him back; and when she heard men say that Jura was now the good fellow he used to be, and played too high and drank too deep for the great name he bore, she was pleased, because he had had no earthly right to go off in that rough wity, or say the things he had said. ‘‘T never see very much of Jura now,” she would say to her friends. ‘‘He is become so very farouche since that Hastern trip; perhaps some woman—lI said so to his dear old father last week: poor Jack is so good and so weak, he is just the man to falla ~ prey to a bad woman.” The ladies to whom she said this laughed a little among them- selves when they had left her, but they liked her all the better for ridding herself of an old embarrassment so prettily; it formed avery good precedent. Jura, of course, said nothing, except to his very intimate friends, who rallied him. To them he said: ** Well, I went to India, fyou know, and, she didn’t like it, and when I came back she had got the Sicilianfellow withfher. so I don’t bore her any more. She is a dear little woman—yes,” For honor makes a lie our social life’s chief necessity, and Jura, having thus lied for honor’s sake, would think of the Princess Zourofft in Paris, and swear round oaths tto himself, and go up- stairs where they were playing bacarat and signing fortunes and estates away with the scrawl of a watch-chain’s pencil. ‘*) think I could have made her happy if it hadn’t been impos- sible,” he would think sometimes. ‘‘She would always have been miles beyond me, and no man that ever lived would have been fgood enough for her; but I think I could have made her happy; I would have served her and followed her like a dog: anyway I would have been true to her, and kept my jlife decent and clean; not like that brute’s.” | J com GE 00 iS (eo) : \ wilt a ase