Moths by Ouida — page 111: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 107 things he had got into the way of doing for her, and he knew all her habits and tastes; losing him was like losing a careful and familiar servant. Still, she was not inconsolable. He had grown boorish and stupid in the last few months; and, though he knew thousands of her secrets, he was a gentleman; they were safe with him, as safe as the letters she had written him. But her vanity was wounded. ‘‘ Just because of that child’s great gray eyes!” she thought, anerily. | Classic Clytemnestra, when murdered. by her son, makes a grander figure, certainly, but she is not, perhaps, more deeply wounded, than fashionable Faustina when eclipsed by her daughter. ‘“You look quite worn, poor pussy !” said Lady Stoat, ten- derly, as she met her one day in Paris, ‘‘ when you ought to ba so pleased and so proud!’ Lady Stoat, who was very ingenious and very penetrating, left no means untried by which to fathom the reasons of the sudden change of Vere. Lady Stoat read characters too well not to know that neither caprice nor malleability was the cause of it. ‘*She has been coerced; but how?” she thought; and brought her microscope of delicate investigation and shrewd observa- tion to bear upon the subject. But she could make nothing of it. ‘‘T do what my mother wishes,” Vere answered her, and answered her nothing more. ‘“Tf you keep your secrets as well when you are married.” thought Lady Stoat, ‘you will be no little trouble to your husband, my dear.” | Aloud, of course, she ‘said only: , | ‘‘So right, darling, so very right. Your dear little mother hag had a great deal of worry in her life; it is only just that she should find full compensation in you. And 1am quite sure you will be happy, Vere. You are so clever and serious; you will have a salon, I dare say, and get all the politicians about you. That will suit you better than frivolity, and give you an aim in society. Without an aim, love, society is sadly like playing cards for counters. One wants a lover to meet, a daughter to chape- rone, a cause to advance, a something besides the mere pleasure of showing oneself. You will never have the lover, I am sure, and you cannot have the daughter just yet; so, if I were you, I would take the cause—it does not matter what cause in the least —say England against Russia, or Russia against England; but throw yourself into it, and it will amuse you, and it will bea safeguard to you from the dangers that beset every beautiful young wife in the world. It is a melancholy thing to confess, and a humiliating one, but all human beings are so made that they never can go on playing only for counters!” , And Lady Stoat, smiling her sweetest, went away from Vere with more respect than she had ever felt before for feather- headed little pussy, since pussy had been able to do a clever thing unaided, and had a secret that her friend did not know, ‘‘Foolish pussy!” thought her friend Adine. ‘ Oh, foolish EGcom G 00 ESS (E(@)