Moths by Ouida — page 181: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. | 907 ** Viola ta fbelle Princesse!” said a work-girl, with a sigh of envy, as she chanced to stand by the great gilded gates of the Hotel Zouroff as Vere went through them in her carriage, lying back on the cushions of it with what was the lassitude of phys- ical and mental fatigue, but to the work-girl looked like the haughty indolence and languor of a great lady. She was more beautiful than she had ever been, but she looked much older than she was; her youth was frozen in her, the ice seemed in her veins, in her brain, in her heart. Prince Zouroff met her at the foot of the staircase. He had been in Paris two months. **T hope you are not too tired?” he said, politely, and gave her his arm to ascend the stairs. ‘* You look terribly white,” he added, when they were alone, and had reached the drawings yoom. ‘* You will really have to rouge, believe me.” Then, as if remembering a duty, he kissed her carelessly. | *‘T hope you will feel well enough to go to Orloft’s to-night,” he added; ‘‘I have promised that you will, and Worth tells me that he has sent you some new miracle expressly for it. The party is made for the grand-duke, you know.” ‘‘1 dare say I shall be well enough,” Vere answered him sims ly. ‘If you will excuse me, I will go to my room and lie down a little while.” She went to her bedchamber where the ‘‘ Slave” of Gerome hung on the wall. ‘¢ All these came this morning and yesterday for madame,” said her maid, showing her a table full of letters, and notes, and invie tation-cards, and one large bouquet of roses amidst them. Roses had been around her all winter in St. Petersburg, but these were very lovely, unforced flowers—all the varieties of the tea-rose in their shades and sizes, with their delicate, faint smell, that is like the scent of old perfumed. laces; but in the center of all these roses of fashion and culture there was a ring of the fragrant, homely, dewy cabbagerose, and in the very center of these, again, a little spray of sweet-brier. : Vere bent her face over their sweetness ‘“Who sent these?” she asked; and before she asked she knew. No one in the house did know. The bouquet had been left that morning forher. There was no name with2zi except herown pame. | ! .. But the little branch of sweet-brier said to her that it was the welcome of Correze, who had not forgotten. It touched and soothed her. It seemed very sweet and thoughtful beside the welcome of her husband, who bade her rouge and go to an embassy ball. ‘‘T always thought he had forgotten!” she mused, and, tired though she was, with her own hands she set the roses in a great cream-colored bowl of Pesaro pottery of Casali diLodi’s and had them close beside her couch as she fell asleep. She, who had so much pride, had no vanity. It seemed strange to her that in his brilliant and busy life full of its triumphs and ‘comicboo cS: