Moths by Ouida — page 258: what you’re looking at

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

254 MOTHS. : expression, and if well done is always admired. She had to v¢ a little more careful always to have her back to the light, and there were sometimes about her eyes lines which nothing would quite paint away, and her maid found her more pettish and eevish. That wasall. Twenty years hence, if Lady Dolly live. here will be hardly more difference than that. Her Sicilian had been also on the banks of the Teple—only far his health, for he was not strong; but he had not been too as- siduous in carrying her shawls, in ordering her dinners, in walk- ing beside her mule in the fir woods, and people began to talk; and Lady Dolly did not choose to imperil all that the flowers for the Children’s Hospital, and the early services at Knightsbridge, had » done for her, so she had summarily left the young man in the fir woods, and come to Svir. ‘‘T always like to witness my dear child’s happiness, you know, - with my own eyes when I[ can; and in London and Paris both she and I are so terribly busy,” she said to her friends at Carlsbad. Herself, she always recoiled from meeting the grave eyes of Vere, and the smile of her son-in-law was occasionally grim and disagreeable and made her shiver; but yet she thought it well te g° “sf their houses, and she was really anxious to see the glories oO ir. When she arrived there, she was enraptured. She adored novelty, and new things are hard to find for a person who has seen so much as she has. The Russian life was, in a measure, different from what she had known elsewhere, the local color en< chanted her, and the obeisances and humility of the people she declared was quite scriptural. The grandeur, the vastness, the absolute dominion, the half- barbaric magnificence that prevailed in this, the grandest sum- mer palace of the Zourofis, delighted her; they appealed forcibly to herimagination, which had its vulgar side. They appeased her conscience too; for, afterall, she thought, what could Vere wish for more? Short of royalty, no alliance could have given her more wealth, more authority, and morerank. These Baltic estates were a kingdom in themselves, and the prodigal, careless, endless luxury, that was the note of life there, was mingled with a despotism and a cynicism in all do- mestic relations that fascinated Lady Dolly. ‘*T should have been perfectly happy if I had married a great Russian,” she often said to herself; and she thought that her daughter was both thankless to her fate and to her Lady Dolly really began to bring herse'f to think so. ‘‘ Very few women,” she niused, ‘‘twould ever have effaced theme selves as I did, very few would have put away every personal feeling and objectionas I did. Ofcourse she doesn’t know; but I don’t believe any woman living would have done asI did, be cause people are so selfish.” ue She. had persuaded herself in all this time that she had been enerous, self-sacrificing, even courageous, in marrying her aughter as she did; and when now and then a qualm passed ever her, as she thought that the world might give all these great qualities very different and darker names, Lady Dolly took a lit: =*¢ : ne | rd - + . ~ ae ; : : , re . ‘ 4 +. “ 4 rr fy : hee. af” ., ee f : arf Gr 14 ai? . (tark s wi . s @ A \. AP seek | ee) k | elo) ani 900 <S(e(e)