Moths by Ouida — page 273: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. yoann 269 Jeanne deSonnaz could always influence Zouroff; Vere never could have done so, let her have essayed what she would. For, be the fault where it may in our social system, the wife never has the power or the dominion that has the mistress. A proud woman, moreover, will not stoop as low as it is neces- sary to do to seize thereins of tyranny over a fickle or sluggishe tempered man; what is not faithful to her, of its own will, a proud woman lets go where it may, without effort, and with resignation or with scorn, according as love or indifference binds her to the faithless. The first thing she found on her table at Villafranca was a letter from her mother. Lady Dolly had found the Caucasus quite stupidly like the Engadine; she thought St. Petersburg a huge barrack and hid- eous; the weather was horribly cold, and she was coming back to Paris as quickly as shecould. She would just stay a day, passing, at Villafranca. ‘*Count Rostrow has not come up to her expectations of him,” thought Madame Nelaguine. Vere said nothing. ~ If she could have prayed for anything, she could have prayed never to be near her mother. Lady Dolly was a living pain, a living shame, to her now, even as she had been on that first day when she had stepped on shore from the boat of Correze, and seen the figure of her mother in the black and yellow stripes of the bathing-dress, out in the full sunshine of Trouville. But Lady Dolly wanted to forget the slights of Count Ros- trow; wanted to play at Monaca; wanted to be seen by her English friends with her daughter; and so Lady Dolly, who never studied any wishes but her own, and never missed a point in the game of self she always played, chose to come to Villa- franca. * Treally do think Vere is wicked!” said Lady Dolly as she drove up between the laurel and myrtle hedges, and looked up at the white walls and green verandas of the villa, rising above the valms and magnolias and Indian conifere of its grounds. ‘- With three such places on three seas, and two such houses in Paris and St. Petersburg asshe has, what on earth can she want to be happy !” Honestly, she could not understand it. It seemed to her very strange. . ‘¢ But she is within a stone’s throw of the tables, and she has eceans of money, and yet she never plays,” she thought again ; and this seemed to her more unnatural still. ‘‘ She is very odd in all ways,” she thought, in conclusion, as the carriage brushed the scent out of the bruised arbutus leaves as it passed. Life for Vere was quieter on the Riviera than elsewhere. There were but a few people in the house; her husband spent nearly the whole of his time at Monte Carlo; and she had much of her own free to do with as she chose. Her husband never asked her to go to Monte Carlo. It was - the one phase of the world that he spared her. In himself he ’ - cS m ws ah - uh