Moths by Ouida — page 58: what you’re looking at

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

Ba ae MOE. Nato whist: reading can’t teach it. Try not to blunder, tka.’s all; and do—watch Fuschia Leach.” . , | ‘*TIs she so very beautiful and good?’ | ‘¢Good?” echoed Lady Dolly, desorientee and impatient. ‘‘T don’t know, I am sure. No, I shouldn’t think she was, by any means. She doesn’t goin for that. She is a wonderful social success, and men rave about her. That is what I meant. If you watch her, she will do you more good than I could if I had pa- tience to talk to you forever. You will see what the girl of your time must be if she wants to please,” Vere’s beautiful mouth curled contemptuously. ‘‘T do not want to please.” ‘‘That isan insane remark,” said Lady Dolly, coldly. ‘If you don’t, what do you live for?” Vere was silent. At dark old Bulmer she had been taught that there were many other things to live for; but she was afraid to say so, lest she should be ‘‘ pedantic ” again. ‘‘That is just the sort of silly thing I hate to hear a girl say, or a woman either. Americans never say such things,” said Lady Dolly, with vicacious scorn. ‘‘It’s just like your father, who always would go out in the rain when dinner was ready or read to somebody who had the scarlet fever, or give the best claret to a plow-boy with a sore throat. It is silly; it is unnatural. You should want to please. Why were we put in this world?” _ “To make others happier,” Vere suggested, timidly, her eyes growing dim at her father’s name. ‘‘ Pid it make me happier to have the scarlet fever brought home to me?” said Lady Dolly, irrelevantly and angrily. ‘* That is just like poor Vere’s sort of illogical reasonings; I remember them so well. You are exactly like him. I despair of you, I quite despair of you, unless Fuschia J.each can convert you.” ‘‘Is she my age?” | ‘¢ A year or two older, I think; she is perfect now; at five-and- twenty she will be hideous, but she will dress so well it won’t matter. I know for a fact that she refused your cousin Mull last month. She was very right; he is awfully poor. Still, she’d have been a duchess, and her father kept a bar: so it shows you what she can do.” ‘; What is a bar?” ‘Oh, pray don’t keep asking me questions like that. You _ make my head whirl. A bar is where they sell things to drink; and her brothers have a great pig-killing place ‘out west,’ wherever that is.” ‘* And she refused my cousin !” _ “Dear, yes! This is the charming topsy-turvey world we live in: you will get used to it, my dear. They made a fuss because a tailor got to court last year. Iam sure I don’t know why they did; if he’d been an American tailor nobody’d have said anything; they wouldn’t even have thought it odd. All the world over you meet them; they get in the swim somehow; they bave such heaps of money, and their women know how te wear things. They always look like—what they shouldn’t look like—to be sure; but so most of us do, and men prefer it.” } com GE 00 (Ss (E(0)