Moths by Ouida — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

RR ine cam 8 MOTHS, I should not wonder in the least if you never even got called a beauty at all.” ; Lady Dolly paused to see the effect of the most terrible predice tion that it was in female power to utter. Vere was quite unmoved; she scarcely heard. She was thinking of that voice, clear as the ring of gold, which had said to her: : ‘Keep yourself unspotted from the world.” | ‘Tf the world is nothing better than this, it must be very easy to resist it,” she thought, in her ignorance. . She did not know that from these swamps of flattery, intrigue, envy, rivalry and emulation, there rises a miasm which scarcely _ the healthiest lungs can withstand. She did not know that though many may be indifferent to the tempting of men, few indeed are impenetrable to the sneer and the smile of women; that to live your own life in the midst of the world is a harder thing than it was of old to withdraw to the Thebaid; that to risk ‘‘ looking strange” requires a courage perhaps cooler and higher than the soldier’s or the saint’s; and that to stand away from the contact and the custom of your ‘‘ set” is a harder and a sterner work than it was of old to go into the sanctuary of La Trappe or Port Royal. Autres temps, autres meurs; but we too have our martyrs. Felicite was a seaside chateau of the Princes Zouroff, which they had bought from an old decayed French family and had transformed into a veritable castle of fairy-land. They came to it for about three months in as many years; but for beauty and loveliness it had no equal, even among the many summer holiday- houses scattered up and down the green coast, from Etretat to the Rochers de Calvados. This year it was full of people: the Princess Nadine Nelaguine was-keeping open house there for her brother Sergius Zouroff. White-sailed yachts anchored in its bay; chasseurs in green and gold beat its woods; riding-parties and driving-partics made its avenues bright with color and movement; groups like Watteau pictures wandered in its gar- dens; there was a little troupe of actors from Paris for its theater; life went like a song; and Sergius Zouroff would have infinitely preferred to be alone with some handsome Tschigan women and many flagons of brandy. | Madame Nelaguine was a little woman, who wer. a wig that had little pretence about it, and smoked all day iong, and read saletes with zest, and often talked them; yet Madame Nelaguine could be a power in politics when she chose, could cover herself with diamonds and old laces, and put such dignity into her tiny person that she once crushed into utter nervousness a new-made empress, whom she considered varnish. She was wonderfully clever, wonderfully learned; she was cunning, and she could be cruel, yet she had in her own way a kind heart; she was.a great musician and a great mathematician; she had been an ambassa- dress, and had distinguished herself at great courts. She had had many intrigues of all kinds, but had never been compromised by any one of them. Shé was considerably older than hes brother, and seldom approved of him, “comicbooks (eo)