Moths by Ouida — page 207: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. — | B08 ““Scarcely,” said Vere; and she felt a glow of color come over er face, because she was sure that the note had come from him, and that the fisher pulling his boat had been one with the lutee player of Venice. | **She has known him, and she does not want tosay so,” thought Madame Jeanne, swift to observe, swift to infer, and, like all ex- perienced Ne i always apt to make the worst deductions. But the bells of the horses, harnessed like Flemish teams to the breaks and other carriages, were jingling in the avenue, and the tasseled and ribboned postilions were cracking their whips. There was little time to be lost, and she reluctantly let Vere escape her. Asshe drove along with Sergius Zourofi in his mail . phaeton to Trouville, she gave him her own version of Vere’s conversation. She exaggerated some things and softened others; phe gave him full cause to feel that his wife abhorred him; but she said nothing of Correze, because she was a prudent tactician, and never touched a fruit till it was ripe to fall. ‘‘It was possibly merely my fancy,” she reflected, as in all the whirl of her lottery, and all the pressure of her admiring throng, she found time to cast many glances at the tent of Correze and saw that he was never beside his opposite neighbor. He was every where else—a miracle of persuasiveness, a king of caprice, the very perfecuion of a seller and a showman, dealing in chil- dren’s toys with half the shops of the Palais Royal emptied into his booth, and always surrounded by a crowd of children, on whom he rained showers of sparkling sweetmeats—but he was never beside the Princess Zouroff. He had taken down the pen- non of Noisette, and in its stead was one with his own device—a ilove whose wings were caught in a thorny rose-bush. He told fortunes, he made himself a clairvoyant, he mystified his clients and made them happy. He was dressed like a Savoyard, and carried an oldivory guitar, and sang strange sweet little ditties in a dulcet falsetto. He was the Haroun-al-Raschid of the Trouville Kermesse, and poured gold into its treasuries by the magic of his name and his voice, the contagion of his laughter and his gayety. But he never once approached the Princess Zouroff; and no one could tell that, as he roamed about, with his five- _year-old adorers flocking after him, or prophesied from a bowl of water the destinies of fair women, in his heart he was always saying, ‘*Oh, my wild white rose! Why did I not gather you and keep you while I could? You area great lady, and they all envy you, and all the while you are outraged and desolate!” _ Vere sat in her azure pavilion, and looked fitter to be a Lily of Astolat presiding at a,tournament of knights. She bought most of her own things herself, and gave them away to children. The sun was strong, the heat was great, the chatter, the clam- or, the many mingling and dissonant sounds, made her head ache, and the pretty, bright rainbow semicircle of tents, and the many colors of the changing multitude, often swam as in a mist¢ before her eyes. Could it, after all, have been he who had warned her? she — began to doubt. It was tooimprobable. Why should he care? = ft mee Kan airyh eto) micboo! ; : Ay Yui Lh ak ™ 7 (id pps Nobah: AK cian we ANY. a a 4 ee