Moths by Ouida — page 265: what you’re looking at

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

‘MOTHS, — it Pris and that we should dine, and laugh, and spend thousands of roubles in a night, and lives if no living creatures were being tortured near us. I cannot forget it; and I will do what I cante serve them.” She had never spoken at such length to her husband in all the three years of her married life; but she felt strongly, and it seemed to her that here reticence would have been cowardice. She spoke quite tranguilly, but her voice had a depth in it that told how keenly she had been moved... Zouroff heard her with a scowl upon his brows; then he laugh: ed contemptuously and angrily. ‘¢ You believe!” he echoed. ‘‘ What should you know, and — why should you care? Will you learn to leave those things alone? A Princess Zouroff dismounting in the dust to bind up the wounds of a Nihilist convict? What a touching spectacle! But we will have no more of these scenes, if you please; they are very unbeconiing, and, more, they are very compromising. The Emperor knows me well, indeed, but enemies might carry such a tale to him; and he might see fit to suspect, to order me not to leave Russia, to imprison me on my estates. It is as like- ly as not that your theatrical vagaries may get bruited about at court. I neither know nor care whether these creatures shot Marcoloff or abetted shooting at him; what Idocare for is the dignity of my name.” Vere, standing beside the great ivory crucifix, with the loose white draperies falling about her, and her fair hair unbound and falling over her shoulders, turned her face more fully upon him, There was a faint smile upon her lips. ‘‘The dignity of your name!” she said, merely; and the accent said the rest. The calm contempt pierced his vanity and self-love, and made him wince andsmart. The first sign she had given that the un- worthiness of his life was known to her had been when she had ordered him to remove the pavilion of Noisette. He had always set her aside as a beautiful, blonde, ignorant, religious creature, and the shock was great to him to find in her a judge who cen- sured and scorned him. ‘‘The dignity of my name,” he repeated sullenly, and with | greater insistance. ‘‘ We were great nobles with Dolgvrouki, when the Romanoffs were nothing. I do not choose for my name to be dragged in the dust because you are headstrong enough, or childish enough, to fancy some incendiaries or assas- sins are martyrs. Have politics, if you like, in Paris in your drawing-room, but leave them alone here. They are dangerous here, and worse than dangerous. They are low. I deny you nothing else. You have money at your pleasure, amusements, jewels, anything you like; but I forbid you political vulgarities, was disgusted when I heard of the spectacle of this morning; I was ashamed——” ; ‘‘Ts it not rather a matter for shame that we eat and drink, and laugh and talk, with all this frightful agony around us?” said Vere, with a vibration of rare passion in her voice. “The people may be wrong; they may be guilty; but their class have tae? tie ~-comicbooks.co RE ne a it eS ae : 7 ¥ . a