Moths by Ouida — page 341: what you’re looking at

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

: — ie MOTHS. : 387 *¢ Jeanne !” ‘*I do not accept divided homage,” said his friend, with close- shut teeth; ‘‘and jealousy is a form of homage—perhaps the truer form,” ‘‘One may be jealous of one’s honor ——” ‘‘You have none,” said Jeanne de Sonnaz, coolly. ‘‘ Your wife told you so long ago. You have rank, but you have not honor. You do not know what it means. My poor Paul does, but then he is stupid and arriere. I think if I told Paul to kill you it might perhaps arrange things; and then how happy they would be, these *‘ Purs amants sur terre egares!’ ”’ Zouroff looked at her fixedly; his face grew anxious, sullen, and pale. ‘* Jeanne, say out; what is it you want me to do?” ‘JT want to reconcile your wife and you, of course,” said ' Jeanne de Sonnaz, driving her cane through the yielding turf, “That, of course, first of all, if possible. If impossible, I would have you divorced from her. Things, as they are, are ridiculous; and,” she added, in a lower breath, as the children and their bal. loons drew near, running against the wind, ‘‘ they may in time compromise me, which I do not choose to permit.” Zouroft understood what she required of him; and he felt a coward and a brute, as his sister had called him. The lily might not be easy to bruise, but it was easy to soil it. ‘‘Correze is certainly in Styria,” she added, as the children joined them. Zouroff stood looking down on the green turf and the bright blossoms of the asters with moody eyes; he was thinking, what beast of prey was ever so hard of grip, so implacable in appetite, as a Rona woman? And yet this woman held him, He dared not disobey, because he could not bear to lose her. That autumn day, sosunny, balmy, and radiant in the sheltered gardens and forests of Arcachon, was winter at Szarisia. Suds den sto:ms and heavy falls of snow had made the forests bare, the plains white; the winds were hurricanes, the thermometer © was at zero, and the wolves ranged the lonely plateaus and moor- lands in bands, hungered and rash. Szarisla in autumn was colder and drearier than Felicite could ever be in mid-winter, and the great bare pile of castle buildings rose black and somber from out the unbroken world of whiteness. | There was an equally unchangeable melancholy around; it was in the midst of a district intensely and bitterly national; the Princes Zouroff were among the most accursed names uf Poland, and the few far-scattered nobles who dwelt in the province would no more have crossed the threshold of Szarisla than they would have kissed the cheek of Mouravieff or the foot of the Hospodar. Vere lived in absolute solitude, and knew that it was as virti- ally alsoa captivity as was ever that of Mary or of Arabella Stuart. Of course she was the Princess Vera, the mistress of Szarisla nominally and actually, but none the less she knew that every hour was ,watched, that every word was listened to, and that, (E(@) Pi comicbooks