Moths by Ouida — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

19 MOTHS. mist before her eyes, a tightness at her throat, a vague and wor- ried pain all over her. ‘‘It is the prawns!” she said to herself. _ ‘««T will never smoke after prawns again.” She was all alone; the counsellor had gone to his schooner, other counsellors were at their hotels; it was an hour when everything except Englishmen aud dogs were indoors. She rose, shook her muslin breakfast - wrapper about her impatiently, and went to see her daughter. ‘‘He used to be so fond of me, poor fellow!” she thought. Such a pure, fond passion then among the roses by the sea. It had all been very silly, and he had used to bore her dreadfully with Keble, and his namesake, George of holy memory, and that old proser, Thomas a Kempis; but still it had been a different thing from all these other loves. He lay in his grave there by the Atlantic among the Devon roses, and she had had no memory of him for many a year;and when he had been alive, she had thought the church, and the old women, and the saints, and the flannel, and the choral services, and the matins and vesper non- sense, all so tiresome; but still he had loved her. Of course they all adored her now, heaps of them; but his love had been a different thing from theirs And somehow Lady Dolly felt a tinge and twinge of shame. ‘Poor Vere,” she murmured to herself, tenderly; and so went to see his daughter, who had been called after him by that absurd old woman, the Duchess of Mull, with whom Lady Dolly, in her dual relation of niece and daughter-in-law, had always waged a fierce undying war—a war in which she*had now got the worst of it. ‘‘ May I come in, dear?” she said at the bed-chamber door. She felt almost nervous. It was very absurd; but why would the girl have her dead father’s eyes? : The girl opened the door and stood silent. ‘‘ A beautiful creature. They are quite right,” thought Lady Dolly, now that her brain was no longer filled with the dreadful _ rumpled brown holland and the smiling face of Princess Helene. The girl was in a white wrapper like her own, only without any lace and any of the ribbons that adorned Lady Dolly at all points, as tassels a Roman horse at Carnival. Lady Dolly was too lovely herself, and also far too contented with herself, to feelany_ jealousy; but she looked at her daughter critically, as she would have lookea at a young untried actress on the boards of the Odeon. ‘‘ Quite another style to me, that is fortunate,” she thought, as she looked. ‘‘ Like Vere—very—quite extraordinari- ly like Vere—only handsomer still.” Uhen she kissed her daughter very prettily on both cheeks, and with effusion embraced her, much as she embraced Princess Helene or anyboby else that she hated. | w ‘* You took me by surprise to-day, love,” she said, with a little accent of apology, ‘‘and you know I do so detest scenes. Pray -try and remember that.” ‘‘Scenes?” said Vere. ‘‘ Please, what are they?” ““ Scenes?” said Lady Dolly, kissing her once more, and 2 little fiicuted, as everybody is who is suddenly asked to define a fas , \ »)-comicbooks.co