Moths by Ouida — page 324: what you’re looking at

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

820 ° MOTHS. with anger and with disgust, and her heart heaved in a bitte: rage and rebellion. Her husband spoke of her to another woman, discussed her acts with another man’s wife! ‘‘Oh, the coward, the coward!’ _ghe said very low between her set teeth; it was the blackest word that her language held. That he should have broken her medallion and insulted her with doubt was insult enough for a lifetime. But that he should relate the affront, and breathe the suspicion to another woman, seemed to her the very last baseness of life. | ‘‘If he were here!” she murmured, with a sudden new-born consciousness in her, as her eyes filled with scalding tears and her heart heaved with indignation. For the first time, an in-— definite yearning rose in her to place her hand in the hand of Correze, and say: ‘‘ Avenge me!” Yet had he even stood before her then she would not have said it; she would have bidden him go and leave her. For what Madame Jeanne called a phantom was always beside her in her path—the phantom ‘of old-world honor, the wraith of dead heroical days. | She leaned against the rail and watched the sea run by the ves- sel’s side, and felt the quiet, slow tears of a great anguish fill her eyes and wet her cheeks. ‘*Do not cry—you are too pretty to cry,” said little Claire, who was a soft and tender child; and Berthe, who was older, and clev- erer, and harder, said: ‘‘ You should not cry, it spoils the eyes.” Then she added, reflectively: ‘‘ Maman ne pleure jamais.” : The little yacht they were in ran with the breezethrough the sweet freshair. It wasa little nautical toy, perfect in its way, that had been given to Vere by her husband when the estate of Felicite was settled upon her; the children had wanted to go to the Vaches Noires and search for mussels, and the little ship skirt- ed the coastas lightly as a sea-gull, the merry little girls scud- ding aboutits deck like kittens and, climbing its cordage like - squirrels, while their mother—their mother who never cried— remained in the garden of Felicite, with a cigar in her teeth, her person stretched full length in a low-hung silk hammock, a cir- , cle of gentlemen around her, and amidst them her host, so stun- — ned by the dexterity of her coquetries, and so diverted by the maliciousness of her pleasantries, that the old passion, which a | dozen years before she had awakened in him, perhaps the worst, as it was in a sense the strongest and most durable, he had ever ahs revived in him sufficiently for jealousy, and held him by er side. It was low water when they reached that part of the Vaches Noires which lies underneath what is called the desert. The © strange-shaped rocks towered above, beyond the sea was blue and smooth, the sand was wet, the children’s equille-fishing promised well. A little boat took them off the yacht to the uncovered beach, and Berthe and Claire, with naked little legs, and their forks shaped like the real fisherfolk’s, and their bright hair fly- ing, forgot that they were little aristocrats and Parisiennes, and _ became noisy, joyous, romping, riotous children, happy in their DPE Sn " comicbooks.co