Moths by Ouida — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. pene tine de Vrille is winning everywhere again; it is sickening. 1 believe she marks the aces!” : Jura gave her his arm. Vere, left alone, sat lost in thought. It was a strange world, No one seemed happy in it, or sincere. Lord Jura, whom her mother treated like a brother, seemed to despise her more than any one; and her mother seemed so say that another friend, who was a French duchess, descended from a Valois, was guilty of cheating at cards! Jura took the white lace and nenuphars into the tea~room. He — was silent and preoccupied. Lady Dolly wanted pretty atter tions, but their day was over with him. ‘Is it true,” he said abruptly to her, ‘‘ that Zouroff wants your daughter?” Lady Dolly sniiled vaguely. ‘*Oh, I don’t know; they say many things, you know. No; 1 shouldn’t suppose he means anything. Should you?” | ““T can’t say,” he answered, curtly. ‘‘ You wish it?” ** Of course I wish anything for her happiness,” He laughed aloud. ‘*What damned hypocrites all you women are!” ** My dear Jura, pray! you are not in a guard-room oer a clubs room!” said Lady Dolly, very seriously shocked indeed. Lord Jura got her off his hands at length, and bestowed her on a young dandy who had become famous by winning the Grand Prix of thatsummer. Then he walked away by himself into the smoking-room, which at that hour was quite deserted. He threw himself down on one of the couches, and thought—moodi- ~ ly, impatiently, bitterly. ‘* What cursed fools we are!” he mused. Whata fool he bad _ been ever to fancy that he loved the bloom of Piver’s powders, the slim shape of a white satin corset, the falsehoods of a dozen. seasons, the debts of a little gamester, the smiles of a calculating coquette, and the five hundred things of like value that made up the human entity known as Lady Dolly! He could see her as he had seen her first, a little gossamer figure under the old elms, down by the water-side at Hurling- ham, when Hurlingham had been in its earliest natal days of glory. There had been a dinner-party for a Sunday evening; he remembered carrying her tea and picking her out the big straw- berries under the cedar. They had met a thousand times before that, but had never spoken. He thought her the prettiest crea- ture he had ever seen. She had told him to call on her at Ches-: hamPlace; she was always at home at four. He remembered their'coming upon a dead pigeon among the gardenias, and how she had laughed, and told him to write its elegy, and he had said - that he would if he could only spell, but he had never been able to spell in his life. All the nonsense, all the trifles, came back to his memory in a hateful clearness. That was five years ago, and she was as pretty as ever: Piver is the true fontaine de jouvence. She was not changed, but he—he wished that he had been dead _ like the blue-rock among the gardenias, - Sj (e(o) m choo an” co d He yO Set hy ‘ a er :