Moths by Ouida — page 110: what you’re looking at

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

106 MOTHS. about her fair hair. Two great slow tears ran down her cheeks and fell on the rough paper of the telegram. ‘‘She loves me!” she thought, ‘‘and what a foolish, fickle, sin- ning creature I shall forever seem to her!” | Then, lest with a moment's longer thought her firmness should fail her, she wrote back in answer: } ‘‘You are so good, and I am grateful. But I see that it is best that I should marry as my mother wished. Pray for me.” i The message winged its way, fleeter than a bird, over the gray sea to where the northern ocean beat the black Northumbrian rocks; and an old woman’s heart was broken with the last-pang of a sad old age. A day or two later the house-party of Felicite broke up, and. the chateau by the Norman sea was leit to its usual solitude. Lady Stoat went to stay with her daughter, the Lady Birkenhead, who was at Biarritz, and would go thence to half a dozen great French and English houses. Prince Zouroff and his sister went to Tsarsko-Selo, as it was necessary for him to see his emperor, and Lady Dolly took her daughter straight to Paris. Paris, in the commencement of autumn was a. desert, but she had a pretty apartment in the Avenue Josephine. The marriage was fixed to take place in November, and two months were not too much for all the preparations which she needed to make. Besides, Lady Dolly preferred that her daughter whould see as few persons as possible. What was she afraid of? She scarcely knew. She was-vaguely afraid of everything. She was so used to breaking her word, that a child’s promise seemed to her a thing as slight as a spider’s gossamer shining in the dew. It was safest, she-fancied, for Vere to see no one, and toa member of the great world there is no solitude so complete as a city out of its,season. So she has shut Vere in her gilded and silvered and over-decorated and over-filled rooms in the Avenue Josephine, and kept her there stifled and weary, like a woodland bird hung in a cage in a boudoir, and never let the girl take a breath of air save by her side in her victoria out in the Bois in the still, close evenings. Vere made no opposition to any- thing. When St. Agnes gave her young body and her fair soul up cs deamon did she think of the shape of the executioner’s SWwoOr Lady Dolly was at this time much worried, too, about her own imniediate affairs. Jura was gone to India on a hunting and shooting tour with two officers of his old regiment, and he had written very briefly to say so to her, not mentioning any period for hisreturn. He meant to break it all off, thought Lady Dolly, with an irritated humiliation rankling in her. Two years before she would have been Didome infuriata ; but time tempers every- thing, and there were always consolations. The young dandy who > had won the Grand Prix was devoted and amusing; it could not be said that Jura had been either of late. She had got used to him, and she had not felt it necessary to be always en beaute for him, which was convenient, Besides, there were heaps of lear ee ~ (ee) ; | : 4 ) com cbooks: