Moths by Ouida — page 316: what you’re looking at

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

812 MOTHS. in the eyes of Kiurope, and leave his palaces without their chief ornament. He did not, as yet, believe himself menaced. Like most men of vicious lives, he was never deceived as to a wom- an’s innocence. He knew his wife to be as innocent as the little dead children she had borne in her bosom. But how long weuld she be so? And if she ceased to be so, truth, by those often untrue lips of Jeanne de Sonnaz, had told him that the fault would lie at hig own door, that he wovid reap as he had sown. As he drove through the streets amidst the noise of Paris, he saw nothing of the glitter and the movement round him; he saw Vere in her white, childish loveliness, as he had seen her on her wedding-night. That evening, when he returned to make his toilet for a great dinner at the Russian Embassy, he was gloomy, perplexed, irresolute. It was toward the close of the season; the evening was hot; thesmell of the lilacs in the garden filled all the air; over where ruined St. Cloud lay there was.a mist that seemed full of rain and thunder. , __ For the first time for months, he bade the women ask his wife if she could receive him in her room, and he entered it. Vere was standing beneath the picture of Gerome; she was already dressed. She wore white velvet, a stuff which she preferred, and whose subtle shades of white it would have been the delight and the despair of Titian and Paul Veronese to reproduce on canvas or on panel. She wore the Great Russian Order of St. Catherine. About her throat she had coils of pearls, and under these hung the medallion of the moth and the star. Zouroff approached her with a roughness that concealed an unusual nervousness. His eyes fell on the necklace, and his anger, that was half against himself and half against her, seized on the jewel as a scapegoat. ‘¢ Who gave you that?” he said, abruptly. She answered: «T think I ought not to say. "When you asked me long ago, Lf did not know.” ‘¢Your singer sent it you. Take it off.” , She hesitated a moment, then unclasped it. She believed in the old forgotten duty of obedience still. ‘¢ Give it tome.” She gave it him. Zouroft threw it on the ground, and set his heel on it, and stamped the delicate workmanship and the exquisite jewels out of all shape and into glittering dust. . Vere did not move amuscle. Only her face grew cold like a stone mask with unutterable scorn. | ‘¢A Princess Zouroff does not need to go to the properties of a theater for her jewels,” he said, in a thick, hoarse,voice. ‘** As I have treated that jewel, so I will treat the man if ever you let him enter your presenceagain. You hear?” | ‘¢T hear.” Allcolor had gone from her lips, but her face ~emained cold : “wii .