Moths by Ouida — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

us MOTHS. Then he would curse Sergius Zouroff, as he went home alone dewn St. James’ Street, in the gray fog of early morning, sick of leasure, weary of play, dull’with brandy, but not consoled by it; knowing that he might have been a better man, seeing the better ways too late; loathing the senseless routine of his life, but too listless to shake off habit and custom and find out any different or higher life. - Hewas Earl of Jura; he had a vast inheritance; he had good health and good looks; he was sound in wind and limb; he had a fair share of intelligence, if his mind was slow; in a few years, when he should succeed to his father, he would have a thousand ‘pounds a day as his income. Yet he had got as utterly intoa groove that he hated as any ploughman that rises every day to | tread the same fields behind the same cattle; and habit made him as powerless to get out of it as his poverty makes the plough- man. ‘‘London is the first city in the world, they say,” he thought, as he went down St. James’ in the mists that made a summer morning cheerless as winter, and as colorless. ‘‘ Well, it may be, foraught I know; but damn it all if I don’t think the Sioux in the big swamps, or the hill tribes in the Cashgar passes, are more like men than we are. And we are all so used to it, we “mever see what fools we are.” : CHAPTER XVI ONE morning the young Duke of Mull and Cantire arrived in Paris, where he was seldom seen, and chanced to find his cousin alone in her morning room at the Hotel Zouroff. He was a good-looking young man, with astupid, honest face; he dressed shabbily and roughly, yet always looked like a gentle; man. He had no talents, but, to compensate, he had no vices: he was very simple, very loyal, and very trustful. He was fond of Vere, and had been dismayed at the marriage so rapidly arranged; but he had seen her at St. Petersburg, and was de- ceived by her coldness and calm into thinking her consoled by ambition. | ‘*T am about tojmarry, too,” he said, witha shame-faced laugh, . a little while after his entrance. ‘‘I have asked her again, and she says, ‘ Yes.’ I ran down to Paris to tell you this.” Vere looked at him with dismay. ‘You do not mean Fuschia Leach?” she said, quickly. The young duke nodded. ‘ is ; ape quite too awfully pretty, you know; a fellow can’t elp it.’ : ‘‘She is pretty, certainly.” ‘Oh, hang it, Vere, that’s worse than abusing her. You hate her, [can see. Of course I know she isn’t our form, but—but—I am very fond of her, dreadfully fond of her; and you will see, in * a year or two, how fast she will pick it all up——” } he Vere sat silent. | | ah She was deeply angered; her chief fault was pride, and incure Pe a Hy neat pete : comicbooks.com