Moths by Ouida — page 299: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 295 angry laugh; ‘‘that is really too funny; and you are speaking not too politely. You sought Vere’s hand, I gave it you; I really do not know——” ‘*But I never bade you force her to me by alie! You never feared me; you—you were no more in fear of me than of half a score of others. Besides, you know very well that no man who who is not a cur ever speaks——” ‘‘T was afraid; I thought you wonld be furious unless she married you; when men are angry, then they speak; how could I tell? You wished that thing, you had it; you are very ungrateful and she too.” Lady Dolly had recovered herself; she had regained that effrontery which was her equivalent for courage, she had no con- science, and she did not see that she had done so much that was wrong. After all, what was a sin?—it was an idea, In her way she was very daring. She would kneel at the flower-services and weep at the Lenten ones, but she did not believea word of all her payer and penance; they looked well, so she did them; that was all. ‘For the moment she had been frightened, but she was no longer frightened. What could he do, what could he say? When she could not be punished for it, guilt of any sort lay very lightly on her head. She knew that he was powerless, and she lost the fear with which the strong rough temper of Sergius Zouroff had often really moved her in an earlier time. The contraction at the corners of her mouth still remained and quivered a little, but she reccvered all her coolness and all that petulant impudence which was perhaps the most serviceable of — all her qualities. et ‘‘-You are very rude,” she said, ‘‘and you are very thankless. You are a very faithless husband, and I know everything, and I say nothing, and I come and stay in your house, and you ought to thank me; yes, you ought to thank me. Ido not know what you mean when you say I used force with my daughter; you could see very well she detested you, and yet you chose to insist: whose fault was that? You have been generous, I do not deny that, but then you are just as much so to creatures—more sol I think you have spoken to me abominably; | am not used to that sort of language; I do not like being rebuked when I have always acted for the best, if the results did not repay me my sacrifices. Asfor your imagining I wanted so very much to marry Vere to you, I can assure you I need not have done so; I could have married her at that very same time to Jura if I had chosen.” “To Jura?” Zouroft looked at her, then burst into a bitter laughter that was more savage than any of his oaths. ‘¢You are an extraordinary woman!” he said, with a little short laugh. yi oT don’t know why you should say that,” said Lady Dolly; ‘‘T am sure I am exactly like everybody else; I hate singularity, there is nothing on earth so vulgar; Ido not know what ever I have done ta deserve the insult of being called ‘extraordinary,’ comicbooks.co