Moths by Ouida — page 335: what you’re looking at

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

‘ ‘ MOTHS. © 331 The house-party suspected nothing. Vere’s women were discreet, and the surprise, the sorrow, the bewilderment of Jeanne de Son- naz at what she had said were the sudden tidings from Ruilhieres had been so natural, that the few people who had seen her at her departure had been deceived into believing those tidings true. The evening passed smoothly; a little operetta in the little theater filled two of its hours, and if the mistress of Felicite looked pale and spoke little, she often did that. Zouroff never looked at his wife and never addressed her. But that also was not rare enough to be any matter for notice. ) ) Vere underwent the fatigue of the night without faltering, though she was in physical pain, and at times a sickly sense of faintness came over her. She was thankful when the men went to the smoking~room, the women to their bedchambers, and she was free to be alone at rest. On the table in her own room there lay a letter, She shuddered a little, for she recognized the loose, rude handwriting of her husband. She was tired of pain and of insult, and she had little hope of any other thing. She sat down and read it. **'You have had your own way,” he wrote to her. ‘* The only woman whom I care for has been driven away by you. Do not suppose you have gained any victory; you will pay the cost of the affront you have dared to pass on her.. I shall not speak to you again if we meet here a thousand times. I wish to avoid scandal for the present at least, not for your sake, but ‘or hers. Sol write to you now. You were about to leave this house. You will leave it. As soon as this circle of guests breaks up, the day — after to-morrow, you will leave it. You will go to an estate of mine in Poland, Waldricin and Ivan will accompany you, and you can take your women, of course. There you will remain. you wish to escape, you can sue me fora divorce. Whenever you do so, I shall not oppose it. ‘* (Signed) SERGIUS NICGOLAIVITCH, ‘PRINCE ZOUROFF.” CHAPTER XXVI. IN one of the most desolate parts of the country of Poland there were vast estates of the Princes Zouroff, conferred on them at the time of the partition of that unhappy land between Christian - sovereigns. They were vast, lonely districts, with villages few and scantily populated—immense plains of grain and grass, and swamps of reedy wildernesses, and dim, sandy forests of pines, straight, and colorless, and mournful. In the heart of all these—whose yield made up no slight sum in the immense riches of the Russian princes who owned them and spent their produce on the pavements of Paris and St. Peters- burg—there stood a large, lofty building, which had been once a fortified monastery and had served for a century as the scarce ever visited castle of the Zourofis. ; It was of immense extent. It had no architectural beauty, and from its many narrow windows there was no outlook excers a EComicboo SS (ace)