Moths by Ouida — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

6 MOTHS. were 60 many men between them; but she could see the wet, clinging, tumbled skirt which came in among the wonderful gar ments of the sacred place, and to make this worse there was an old Scotch plaid above the skirt, not worn, thrown on anyhow, as she said, pathetically, long afterward. | ‘¢Whata guy!” said Lady Dolly. ‘What a face!” said the courtiers; but they said it under their breath, being wise in their. generation, and praising no woman before another. But the brown holland came toward her, catching in the wind, and showing feet as perfect as her own. The brown holland stretched two hands out to her, and a voice cried aloud: “* Mother! don’t you know me, mother?”’ Lady Dolly gave a little sharp scream, then stood still. Her pretty face was very blank, her rosy small mouth was parted in amaze and disgust. ‘‘IN THAT DRESS!” she gasped, when the position became clear to her and her senses returned. But the brown holland was clinging ina wild and joyous kind of horrible, barbarous way all about her, as it seemed, and the Scotch plaid was pressing itself against her baptiste skirts. ‘*Oh, mother! how lovely you are! Not changed in the ve least! Don’t you know me? Oh, dear! don’t you know me? y am Vere.” Lady Dolly was .a sweet-tempered woman by nature, and only made fretful occasionally by maids’ contretemps, debts, husbands, and other disagreeable accompaniments of life. But at this moment she had no other sense than that of rage. She could have struck her sunshade furiously at all creation; she could have fainted, only the situation would have been rendered more ridiculous still if she had, and that consciousness sustained her; the sands, and the planks, and the sea, and the sun, all went round her ina whirl of wrath. She could hearall her lovers, and friends, and rivals, and enemies tittering; and Princess Helen Olgarouski, who was at her shoulder, said, in the pleas- antest way: ‘‘Is that your little daughter, dear? Why she is ‘quite a wome an! A new beauty for Monseigneur.” | Lady Dolly could have slain her hundreds in that moment, had her sunshade but been of steel. To be made ridiculous! ‘There is no more disastrous destiny under the sun. _ The brown holland had ceased to cling about her, finding itself repulsed; the Scotch plaid had fallen down on the plank; there were two brillant and wistful eyes regarding her from above, and one hand still stretched out shyly. | ‘‘T am Vere!” said a voice, in which tears trembled and held a struggle with pride. ; *T see you are!” said Lady Dolly, with asperity. ‘‘ What on earth made you come in this—this—indecent way for—without even dressing! I expected you at night. Is that Fraulein Schroder? She should be ashamed of herself.” *‘T see no shame, Miladi,” retorted in guttural tones an injured rman, ‘‘in that a long-absent and much-loving daughter EO comicbooks