Moths by Ouida — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

38 ‘MOTHS. ‘‘T witnessed your arrival yesterday. Besides, who has not heard of lovely Madame Dolly’s daughter ?” Vere was silent. She vaguely wondered why her mother was called Dolly by all men whatever. Suddenly, with a pang of conscience, she remembered Keziah, and sprang up on her sabots. Correze divined her impulse and her thought. ‘Your good woman is quite safe,” he said: ‘‘the peasants have seen her on the top of the rocks, but she seems to have taken a wrong path, and so it may be half an hour before we overtake her. But do not be afraid or anxious. I will see you safely homeward.” Vere grew very pale. ‘‘But my mother made me promise to see no one.” ‘¢ Why ?” ‘‘ Because my dress is all wrong. And poor Keziah !—oh, how frightened she will be !” ‘Not very. We shall soon overtake her. Or, better still, I will send a lad after her while we rest a little. Come and seemy village, if you can walk in your sabots. It is a village that I have discovered, so I have the rights of Selkirk. Come, if you are not too tired. Brava!” He cried ‘‘ brava!” because she walked so well in her wooden shoes; and he saw that to please him she was overcoming the timidity which the solitude of her situation awoke in her. ‘¢ How can she be the daughter of that impudent fine mouche” he thought. Vere was shy but brave. Lady Dolly and her sisterhood were audacious but cowardly. He led her across the broad, hard head of the cliffs, mottled black and gray where the rock broke through the grass, and thence across a sort of rambling down with low furze-bushes erowing on it, further by a cart-track, where cart-wheels had cut deep into the soil, to alittle cluster of houses, lying sheltered from the sea-winds by the broad bluff of the cliffs which rose above them and gathered under the shelter of apple and cherry- trees, with one great walnut growing in the midst. It was a poor little village enough, with a smell of tar from the fishing nets and sails spread out to dry, and shingle roofs held down with stones, and little dusky close-shut pigeon-holes for windows; but in the memory of Vere forever afterward that little village seemed even as Arcadia. He had two wooden chairs brought out, and a wooden table, and set them under the cherry-trees, all reddened then with fruit. He had a wooden bowl of milk, and honey, and brown bread, and cherries, brought out, too. There were lavender and afew homeiy stocks and wall-flowers growing in the poor Soil = iat the fences of the houses; bees hummed, and swallows cleft e air. ‘You are thirsty and hungry, I am sure,” he said, and Vere, who had not learned to be ashamed of such things, said, with a gmile, ‘‘I am.” He had reassured her as to Keziah, after whom he had sent @ y EO ‘ | ~ comicbooks