Moths by Ouida — page 325: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 821 sport and the fine weather. At that part of therough shore there was no one near, except some peasants digging for their livelihood, as the little girls were digging for play, at the silvery hermits’ holesin thesand. There were fetes at Houlgate that kept the summer crowd that day from the distant rocks. Berthe and Claire, agile as'they were, were no'match for the agility of the lords of the soil, and the pastime absorbed and distracted them. Vere, seeing themso happy, left them in the care of her old skipper, who was teaching them the mysteries of the sport, and sat down under the somber amphitheater of the rocks. She was fond of the children, but that day their shouts and their smiles alike jarred on her; she had learned for the first time that it was with their mother that her husband discussed her acts and thoughts. She sat quite alone in a sheltered spot, where the slate of the lower formation had been hollowed by the winter waves at high tides into a sort of niche; she thought of the day when, older in years than these little children, but younger in heart than even they were now, she had come on these shores in her old brown holland skirts. It was just sucha day as that day had been—clear, cloudless, with a sunlit sea, and an atmosphere so free from mist that the whole line of the far- reaching coast, now become so familiar to her sight, was visible in all its details, from the mouth of Seine to the mouth of Orne, Her heart was very weary. The distant laughter of the little children, borne to her ear by the wind, jarred on her. Where was the use of honor and good — faith? They smelt sweet, like a wholesome herb, in her own hand, but in all her world none set any storeon them. She was free to throw them aside if she chose. She would be more popular, find more sympathy, nay, to her husband himself would seem more human and more truthful, if she did so. The sense of life’s carelessness, impotency for good, and frightful potency for evil, weighed on her like a stone. Her husband had said to her that women were only loyal till they were tempted; was it so? Washonor so poor a thing? she thought. In dark old Bul- mer the now dead woman had taught her to think honor a sword like Britomart’s, that in a maiden’s hand might be as potent and as strong as in a knight’s. VW/hat was the poor, frail, empty thing that bent at a touch and broke? She thought what they called honor must surely be no finer or better thing than a mere dread of censure, a mere subserviency to opinion, a thing without sub- stance or soul, a mere time-service and cowardice. A fisherman came by her with his load of mussels and little eels, going on to Bougeval. He pointed up above her head, and said, in his Froissart-like accent— ‘There will be a broken neck up yonder, unless Our Lady in- terferes.” | Vere, alarmed for the children, who were out of sight, looked upward: she saw aman coming down the precipitous clifis from the country above Her heart stood still; her blood ran cold: she recognized Cor- reze. ) The fisher stood staring upward; the descent was one which Gomicbooks co