Moths by Ouida — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

r MOTHS. 37 not to think too badly of her naughty little puss—she was so young. In a few moments all the pegtops had jumped into the water, and the young Duc de Dinant was teaching Lady Dolly to exe- cute in the waves a new dance just introduced in an operetta of Messieurs Meilhac and Herve—a dance that required prodigious ieaps and produced boisterous laughter. Vere did not look back once; she felt very ashamed still, but not of herself, Jura did not address a word to her, except when they had az proached the steps of the Chalet Ludoff; then he said, somewha. sheepishly, ‘‘ I say—if she’s nasty don’t you mind. She can be; out it soon blows over——” Vere was silent. **Won’t you come out to-day?” he pursued. ‘‘I do so wish vou. would. it’s my tub, you know, and you would like it. Do come.’ «¢ 'W here?” ‘*On my yacht. We are going to picnic at Villiers. The grand duchess is coming, and she is great fun, when she isn’t too drunk. Why shouldn’t you come? It seems to me you are shut up like @nun, It’s not fair.” * My mother does not wish me to come anywhere,” said Vere, dreamily, heeding him very little. ‘‘There is the house. Go back to them, Lord Jura. Thanks.” Jura went back, but not until he had sent her up a pretty little breakfast, and the most innocent of his many French novels. ‘‘Tt’s a beastly shame,” he said, as he walked toward the swimmers over the sands. Correze, meanwhile, who had resisted all entreaties to bathe, and all invitations to pass the day on the ‘‘ Ephemeris,” wended his way slowly toward his hotel. ‘She has claws, that pretty cat,” he said to himself, thinking of Lady Dolly. He had never much liked her, and he detested her now in a petulent, impetuous way that now and then broke up the sunny softness of his temper. ‘‘How sweet she is now! sweet as the sweet-brier and a¢ healthy,” he thought to himself. ‘‘How clear the soul, how clear the eyes! If only that would last! But one little year in the world, and it will be all altered. She will have gained some chic, no doubt, and some talent and tact; she will wear high- heeled shoes, and she will have drawn in her waist, and learned how to porter le sein en offrande, and learned how to make those grand gray eyes look languid, and lustrous, and terrible. Oh, yes, she will have learned allthat. But then, alas! alas! she will have learned so much too. She will have learned what the sickly sarcasms mean, and the wrapt-up pruriencies intend, and what women and men are’ worth, and how politics are knavish tricks, and the value of a thing is just as much as.it will bring, and all the rest of the dreary gospel of self. What a pity! what a’pity! But it is always so. I dare say she will never stoop to folly as her pretty mother does; but the bloom willgo. She will be surprised, shocked, pained; then, little by little she will get nsed to it all--they all do—and then - wal 4 ecomicbooks co