Moths by Ouida — page 336: what you’re looking at

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

339 MOTHS. on one side to the interminable woods of pine, and on the other over the plains and marshes through which a sullen, yellow river crept. Within it was decorated as it had been decorated by Ivan Zouroff at the time of the abdication of Stanislas Augustus. From the gay, gorgeous interior and the sunlit gardens and sea-terraces of the Norman chateau, Sergius Zouroff sent his wife to this place, amidst the desolation of .Poland, then bleed- ing afresh from the terrorism that strove to stamp out the Nihil- ists. Vere left Felicite without protest. Felicite was hers by settle- ment, but she did not urge that fact. She accepted the com- mands of her husband, and traveled across Europe in almost un- broken silence, accompanied by the attendants he had selected, by her women, and by the dog_ Loris. She arrived at Szarisla late one evening, and, despite the fires, © the lights, the torches in the courts, the large household assem- bled in the entrance, a chill like that of the catacombs seemed around her, and she felt that living she entered a grave. When she had read her husband’s letter, her first impulse had been to refuse, and to disobey him—to go away with her own jewels, and no single thing of his, and gain her own bread in some way in solitude, asshe had intended to do if Jeanne de Son- naz had remained in her house. Then, on later and calmer thought, she accepted the banishment to Poland. Her pride made her willing to avoid all scandal, her principle made her deem it still right to obey her husband. She had asked him once to let her live on his estates, out of the world; she considered she had the request granted, though in a savage and bitter way. As to the condition that he made her return dependent on, she lifted her head, and drew her head erect, with the haughty re- solve that she was capable of when stung and roused. Sooner than receive Jeanne de Sonnaz in her house, or ever salute her as a friend, she said to herself that she would live and die on the Polish plains, She did not answer; she did not protest or rebuke; she neither wrote not spoke to her husband in the fortnight that followed; she entertained her guests with her usual calm, cold erace, and when the last of them had left, and the day of her departure arrived, she went away tranquilly, as though she went of her own wiil, and in her own way, taking the dog Loris, Zouroff had not been surprised. Though he could ill appreciate her character, he did not misun- derstand it. ‘‘She may break, she will never bend,” he thought, as, careful always of the outside observances of courtesy, he bade her a courtly farewell before his household. ‘‘T am his prisoner!” she thought, as a week later she entered the austere gloom of Szarisla. But sooner than release herself on the terms he offered, she said in her heart that Poland should bs her tomb, as it had been that of so many martyrs. Martyrs to mn idea, the world said of those. It would have said the same of er. | | To her mother, and her friends, and all society, Sergius Zourofft explained that his wife had long asked him to allow her to pass some months on his Northern estates, to establish a school and comic ,O00KS.Gom