Moths by Ouida — page 338: what you’re looking at

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

834 MOTHS. was joined to the wivza: feebleness and inertnc.. of the tu” temperament; she railed at him, jeered at him, commanded hire, yet fascinated him. He knew her to be worthless, faithless, never wholly his or wholly any one’s, yetshe held him, “ After all, she is the woman I have loved best,” he said to himself, and believed it, because she had the gift of exciting all that was worst in him, and subduing his fierce impulses to her own will and Aaa aa a When he had married, Jeanne de Sonnaz, who beyond all things valued her position and loved the world, had kept her peace, because she did not choose to jeopardize her name or gain the ridicule of her society. But she had always said to herself, ‘¢ Je me vengerai.” | She kept her word. Vere was in her captivity at Szarisla; and the Duchesse de - $onnaz—moving from one chateau to another, and entertaining circles of guests for the shooting at their own mighty place of Ruilhieres—said easily in the ear of the two or three great ladies who were her most intimate associates: that there had heen a scene at Felicite; she had tried to mediate between her old friend _ and his wife, but vainly, so far as peace went; Zouroff had for- bidden the princess to receive Correze, and Correze had been found there at evening in the gardens: oh, there was nothing — serious—Vera was a young saint—but all the same there had been a scene, and Zouroff had sent his wife to Szarisla. Then the two or three whom she told told others, and so the tale ran, and grew as it ran, and was believed. The world was satisfied that the Princess Zouroff was en penitence in Poland. ‘‘T think they were lovers many years ago. [remember, when she was a mere child, seeing her in a boat with Correze; she had come from Havre with him; her mother was distracted. I sup- pose Zouroff and the Nelaguine knew nothing of it,” said the Princess Helene Olgarousky, who made one of the brilliant autumn party at Ruilhieres, where Zouroff was not. ‘‘ Be sensible, mon ami,” had said the Duchesse Jeanne; ‘** now our wife is away 1 cannot receive you; it would not do. Oh, in winter, when we are all in Paris again, you may come and see Paulas usual. But stay at Ruilhieres you will not; no—no—no! Three times, No!” She had no beauty, and no youth, she had no heart, and no conscience; she had been his friend for fifteen years, and he usually tired of any woman in less than fifteen days. Yet Sergius Zouroff chafed at the interdiction to stay at Ruilhieres, — as though he were eighteen and she seen but an hour before, and found himself waiting with impatience for the moment of his return to Paris, with a vague sense that without this woman life © was stupid, empty, and purposeless. He missed the goad to his senses and his temper with which she knew so well how to guide him, as the tamed elephant turn- ed loose misses the prick of the mahout’s steel. But she, who knew that the elephant too long left to himself turns wild and comes never again to his mahout’s call, took care not to leave Zouroff too much to himself. When the first shooting-party Mie | - comicbooks.co