Moths by Ouida — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

BE - MOTHS. : ing, after a childhood passed by the rough gray waters of an iron: coast. He took the oars, and she the ropes. The sea was smooth and there was no wind, not even a ruffle in the air; the boat glided slowly and evenly along. He talked and laughed, he amused and beguiled her; he told. her stories; now and then he sang low sweet snatches of Venetian boat-song'ss and rowing-chants of the Lombard lakes, and of the | Riviera gulfs and bays; the sun was still cool; the sea looked blue ; to her eyes which had never beheld the Mediterranean. ' There were many crafts in sight, pleasure and fishing-vessels, and far- ther away large ships; but nothing drew near them save one old coble going in to Etretat from the night’s dredging. It was an enchanted voyage to Vere, as the hamlet on the cliffs, and the homely lavender, and the cabbage-rose, had been all enchanted things. She wasinadream., She wondered if she were really living. As she had never read but great and noble books, she thought vaguely of the Faerie Queen and of the Fata Morgana. And through the sunlight against the sea, she saw as in a golden halo the beautiful, brilliant, dreamy face of Correze. At last the voyage was done, The little boat grated against the sands of Trouville, and against the side of a yacht’s gig waiting there, with smart sailors in white jerseys and scarlet caps, with ‘‘ Kphemeris” in large blue letters woven on their shirts. _ It was still early, earlier than it was usual for the fashionable idleness of the place to be upon the shore; and Correze had hoped to run his boat in on land unnoticed. But, as the cranki- ness of fate would have it, several people had been wakened before theirusual hour. ‘The yachts of a great Channel race, after having been all night cut toward the open ocean, had hove in sight on their homeward tack, and were objects of interest, as heavy bets were on them. Correze, to his annoyance, saw several skifis and canoes already out upon the water round him, and several poppy-colored and turquoise-colored stripes adorning the bodies of human beings, and moving to and fro, some on the sand, some in the surf, some in the deeper sea. There was no help for it, he saw, but to run the boat in, and trust to chance to take his companion unnoticed across the few hundred yards that separated the shore from the little house of Lady Dolly. , But chance chose otherwise, As he steered through the still shallow water, and ran the boat up on the sand, there were some human figures, like gayly- painted pestops, immediatly swarming down toward him, and among them Lady Dolly herself; Lady Dolly with a penthouse- like erection of straw above her head to keep the sun off, and her body tightly encased in black and yellow stripes, till she looked like a wasp,—if a wasp had ever possessed snowy arms quite bare -and bare white legs. . . * Correze gave his hand to Vere to alight, and she set her little wooden shoes upon the dusty shore, and did not look up. The golden clouds seemed all abaqut her still, and she was wondering comicbooks.corn