Moths by Ouida — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

tas MOTHS. CHAPTER III VERE was awakened at five o’clock by tumultuous laug)iing ay shrill outcries, and a sudden smell of cigar-smoke. It wat her mother returning home. Doors banged; then all grew still. Vere got up, looked at the sea, and remembered that permission to go out had been given her. In another hour she was abroad in the soft cool sunshine of early morning, the Channel before her, and behind her the stout form of Northumbrian Keziah. Trouvilain, as somebody has wittily called it, is not lovely. Were it not so celebrated, undoubtedly it would be called very ugly; but, in the very first light of morning, every place on earth, except a manufacturing city, has some loveliness, and Trouvilain at daybreak had some for Vere. There were yachts ‘with slender, trim lines, beautiful against the clear sky. There were here and there provision-boats pulling out with sailors in dark blue jerseys, and red-capped. ‘T‘here were fleecy, white clouds, and there were cool sands; cool now, if soon they woukd be no better than powder and dust. Along the poor planks that are the treadmill of fashion, Vere’s buoyant young feet bore her with swiftness and pleasure till she reached the Corniche des Roches Noires, and got into the charming green country. - She glanced at the water, and longed to run into the shallows and wade and spread her limbs out, and float and swim, beating the sea with her slender arms and rosy toes as she had done most mornings in the cold, wind-swept, steel-gray northern tides of her old home. But her bathing costume had been forbidden, had even been carried away in bitter contempt by one of the French maids, and never would she go into the sea in this public place in one of those sleeveless, legless, circus-rider’s tunics; no, never, she said to herself; and her resolves were apt to be very resolute ones. Her old guardian at Bulmer Chase had always said to her, ““ Never say ‘no’ rashly, nor ‘yes,’ either; but when you. have said them, stand to them as a soldier to his guns. She did not at all know her way, but she had thought if she kept along-by the water she would some time or other surely get out of the sight of all those gay houses, which, shut as all their rsiennes were, and invisible as were all their occupants, yet ad fashion and frivolity so plainly written on their coquettish awnings, their balconies, their doorways, their red geraniums and golden calceolarias blazing before their blinds. At five o'clock there was nobody to trouble her. certainly; yet within light of all those windows she had felt as if she were Still before the staring eyes and eye-glasses of the cruel crowd of that terrible yesterday. _ She went on quickly with the elastic step which had been used to cover so easily mile after mile of thé heathered moors of Bus. mer, and the firm yellow sands by the northern ocean. Before the cloudless sun of *he August daybreak was much above the (eo)