Moths by Ouida — page 300: what you’re looking at

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

: ae r , J‘! - - te ; 41) as sine ‘ ef Few Ye ee 806 | MOTHS. I hate people who drive at things. I always detest conundruuss and acrostics ; perhaps I am too stupid for them; I would rather be stupid than extraordinary : it is less voyant.” | He stared down on her gloomily for a while, while the laugh rattled in his throat with a cynical sound that hurt her nerves. ‘You are a wonderful woman, Miladi. Inever did you justice, I see,” he said curtly. ‘‘ Zola will want alower deep before long, I suppose, he will do well to leave his cellars for the drawing- rooms.” | ‘¢ What do you mean?” said Lady Dolly, opening innocent eyes of surprise. Zouroff paced slowly by her side; he was silent for some mo- ments, then he said, abruptly— ‘‘Pardon me if I do not ask you to return to my house. You and your daughter should not be sheltered by the same roof.” Lady Dolly’s pretty teeth gnawed her under lip to keep in her fury; she could not rebuke and she dared not resent it. : ‘* We had better not quarrel,” she said, feebly; ‘‘ people would talk so terribly.” Of course we will not quarrel,” said her son-in-law, with his cynical smile; ‘‘ who ever does quarrel in our world? Only—you understand that I mean what I say.” ‘‘Tam sure I understand nothing that you mean to-day,” said Lady Dolly, with a little, feeble, flitting laugh. Then in unbroken silence they went to where the ponies waited. | ‘¢ You are too cruel to us not to return,” said Zouroff, publicly, for the sake of the world’s wide-open ears, as she went to her car- riage on his arm, **T cannot stand your mistral,” said Lady Dolly, also for the world, and, in his ear, added, with an injured sweetness, ‘‘and I do not like reproaches, and I never deserve them.” Lady Dolly drove home to La Condamine, where she was stay- ing with the Marquise Pichegru, and, when she was all alone behind the ponies, shuddered a little, and turned sick, and felt fora moment as if the leaden hand of a dark guilt lay on her conscience; her nerves had been shaken, though she had kept so calm a front, so cool a smile; she had been a coward, and she had sacrificed the child of her dead husband because in her cowardice she had feared the resurrection to her hurt of her own bygone sins, but she had never thoucht of herself as a wicked woman. in her frothy world there is no such thing as wickedness, there is only exposure, and the dread of it, which passes for virtue. She lived, like all women of her stamp and her epoch, in an atmosphere of sugared sophisms; she never reflected, she never admitted that she did wrong; in her world nothing mattered ue, unless, indeed, it were found out and got into the public mouth. Shifting as the sands, shallow as the rain-pools, drifting in all danger to a lie, incapable of loyalty, insatiably curious, still as a friend and ill as a foe, kissing like Judas, denying like Peter, impure of thought, even where by physical bias or politic prue } ‘ j - : ‘+ : , a =)? f ? Vi a 7 > Af 7 * 4 - ‘ ‘ i, | f . Ng , e ik ¢ ; Lae | 7 J Na ’ Wibte iy ; TY Fae \ pal iy ‘ t- ia J pel 6 *4F 6 OA * f : mi : ry er" Ln ’ -” } lf : *,) y ; rely Ad Jit, Le ; ry ven | ,F) 7 ™~ 6) Py Ne -— ~S - 6 7) ior 6 SF ite Whit: he Oe TF — Ss fs