Moths by Ouida — page 312: what you’re looking at

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

308 _ MOTHS. For Lady Dolly, true woman of the times, always thought that those whom she had wronged were cruel to her. Why would they not forget? She herself could always forget. | ‘*Tt shows such a bad disposition to resent and remember so long,” she would say to herself; life was too short for long memories. ‘‘Give me the art oblivion,” cried Themistocles; Lady Dolly had learned the art, or rather had had the power born in her, and forgot, as naturally as birds moult in autumn, her sins, her follies, her offenses, and her friends. Only one thing she never forgot, and that was a wound to her vanity; and no one ever looked at her when her daughter was nigh, Zouroff, who did not know ‘‘ society talked,” felt abashed before the presence of his wife; he felt as Louis of Hungary felt when — hesaw the celestial roses in the lap of that. saintly queen to whom Madame Nelaguine compared Vere. Since the day when her mother’s name had been spoken be- tween them, he had never seen his wife alone one moment, and never had fairly met her glance. Yet when they were in the same room in society his eyes fol- lowed her as they had never done before, wistfully, somberly, wonderingly. Jeanne de Sonnaz said to herself, ‘‘ He will end as le mari amoureaux,” and, so thinking, spoke to him one morn- ing early, when he was sitting in that little yellow boudoir, with all its Chinese idols and Chinese work, which was so curiously unlike all the rest of the dark old hotel of the Renaissance, which a Duc de Sonnaz had built under Francis the First. With all her cleverest tact she brought uppermost the name of Correze, and dropped little hints, little suggestions, harmless yet pregnant, as she leaned back in her low chair, smoking a cigarette with her cup of coffee. Zouroff grew irritated at last, but he did not know how to ex- press his irritation without appearing absurd in her sight or pro- voking her laughter. ) ‘¢My dear, you must be blind not to see there is some sentiment between Vera and this lyric Bossuet, who made your piano his pulpit,” she continued, as he muttered something not very in- telligible. ‘‘ When he refused to come to Svir you might have known. What singer without a motive refuses a mountain of roubles? Besides, he was at Ischl. I did not tell you—why ~ should I tell you?—but he serenaded her adorably, he climbed ta impossible altitudes to get her flowers; he went away in the oddest, most abrupt fashion. My dear Sergius, you are a bat, a mole——~” ‘‘Pshaw! the man is only a mime, a mime with a thrush’s pipe,” said Zouroff, with rough scorn. ‘*Do you suppose she would descend------” ** est convenu,” interrupted Madame Jeanne; ‘‘oh, c’est conveni. Your wife is the peril of her sex,she is a second Madame Saint Elizabeth, all the world knows that; when we see her at dinner we expect an angel to fill her glass with wine of Paradise; oh, es, you cannot suppose I mean the slightest indiscretion in her, era is incapable of an indiscretion—so inc apable that in a less Gom G 000 q (E(0)