Moths by Ouida — page 210: what you’re looking at

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

906 MOTHS. of rank and so proud of habit, yet were not above the distilling room and the spinning-wheel, who were quite serious, sweet, and smelt of the rose-leaves with which they filled their big Jars. _ Ischl goes early to bed and early rises. : It was quite quiet on this August evening. It was very full, but its throng was a polite and decorous one. Groups walked noiselessly up and down under the trees of the esplanade; music had long ago ceased from sounding; men and women sat outon the balconies with dimly-lit chambers behind him; but there was no louder sound than a dog’s bark, or a girl’s laughter, or the swish of an oar in the river. From the road of the north-east, and over the gray bridge with its canopied saint, there came suddenly, with a sound of trampe- ling hoofs, whips cracking in air, and clanging post-horns, that harshly broke the repose of the twilight hour, a traveling: carriage with four horses, containing two ladies and a dog. . The carriage had come from Salzburg. It was open, for the night was mild, and as a miracle of kindness, it did notrain. A man leaning in a casement of the Kaiserinn_ Elizabeth recognized both ladies and dog as the heavy landau rolled off the bridge across the road, then disappeared round the corner of the build- ing. It was followed by another carriage, full of servants. The host of the Kaiserinn Elizabeth, with all his officials small and - great, precipitated themselves into the street, bowing bareheaded, as the fiery horses were Harta up before the door. The quick twilight fell; Traunwater began to look like a shoal of emeralds under the sun- rays, a white round moon began to show itself behind the hills; the forms of people walking on the banks became indistinct, though the murmur of their voices and laughter grew clearer, otherwise it was so still that he who leaned over his balcony and saw tie carriage arrive could hear the swish of the barge-ropes as the water moved them, and the sound of a big dog lapping in fhe river underneath him, ‘*Tté is destiny!” he said to himself. ‘* For two whole years } have avoided her, and fate, taking the shape of our physicians, sends us here!” THe leaned over the balcony, and watched the water flow under the shadows of the houses and the trees. ‘*Is it Duchesse Jeanne’s doing?” he thought with that unrea- soning instinct which in some men and women guides their fancy to true conclusions. ‘*That is nonsense, though: what can she know? And yet I remember, at that ball, after the Nuit de Mai, she seemed to suspect something. She laughed; she told me I alone could thaw ice——”’ At that moment an Austrian march, stoutly brayed under the windows of the Kaiserinn Elizabeth, seemed to his ears to fill the night with discord. He started to his feet with impatience and in suffering, as the sounds grated in his ears, and rapidly shut his windows one after ' another, to exclude the sound. 3 * Where is Anatole?” he muttered, irritably, as he paced the #uil chambers allotted to him. He had arrived only twenty 4h BM oe the valleys from dusky grew dark; the com G 00 q55 (E(@)