Moths by Ouida — page 320: what you’re looking at

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

316 MOTHS. which often survives the death of all religious beliefs, with those | who have been éducated in strict rituais, as he had been. When June came they went to Felicite. It was the same thin every year. The world went with them. To her it seemet always as if they were perpetually on the stage before an audi- ence; the audience varied, but the play was always the same. She would have given ten years of her life for a few weeks: rest, silence, solitude, with ‘‘ plain living and high thinking,” and time to watch the clouds, the showers, the woodlands, the ways of birds and beasts, the loves of the bees and the flowers. But she never had one day even to herself. There was always on her ear the murmur of society—always, like the shadow on the sun- dial, some duty that was called pleasure, obscuring each hour as it came. It was a bright Norman summer, the weather clear and buoy- ant, the country a sea of apple-blossoms. Once or twice she got away by herself, and went to the little cluster of cabins on the head of the cliffs beyond Villerville. The old woman was there—always knitting, always with a white cap and a blue linen gown, against the wall of furze. ‘¢'The lark is dead,” she said, with a shake of the head. ‘It was no fault of mine, my princess; a boy with a stone one day— ah! ah!—how shall I tell the gentleman when he comes? He has not been yet this summer; he was here in midwinter—oh, quite midwinter—and he said he was going away into the North some- where. Jesu-Maria! the heaps of cent-sous pieces he gave m@ to take care of that lark!” | The shrewd old woman under the white roof of her cap watch- ed the face of her ‘‘ princess.” ‘‘I want to know if she cares . ays i thought. ‘* But that beautiful angel could not fail to e loved.’ } Vere went away slowly through the high grove, even under the shade of the apple-blossoms. How long ago—it seemed long asa century—since she had been the child listening, with her heart in her eyes, to the song of the lark that was dead! Her husband said to her sharply that day after her return, ‘¢ Where were you this morning? You were hours away.” ‘‘T dreve to Villerville,” she answered him. ‘There is a shrine near there, I think?’ added Madame Jeanne, with apparent simplicity. The somber thoughts of Zouroff taught her that. “IT know of no remarkable shrine,” replied Vere, who did not imagine any double meaning in the words. ‘‘There is none nearer than Val de Grace.” Her husband was silent. The duchess rose, and hummed a little song then being sung by Jane Hading: Vous voulez vous moquer de moi. This year Madame Jeanne stayed at Felicite. Why not? She © had her little girls Berthé and Claire with her, and her husband came now and then, and would come for a longer time when the iat 0 Se of pheasants would begin to fall in the drives of the ‘ 4 . \ Ye , ? ir nw Ninh ® .~ , “comicbooks.col