Moths by Ouida — page 356: what you’re looking at

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

B52. MOTHS. resistance in his wife. Instead of this, she remained there with- out a word even of regret or protest. : He was enraged that he had ever sent her into exile. He would not retreat from a step he had once taken; he would not withdraw from a position he had thought it for his dignity to assume. But he felt that he had committed the worst of all errors in his own sight—an error that would end in making him absurd in the eyes of the world. He could not keep his wife for- ever at Szarisla; society would wonder, her family wouid mur- mur; even his Empress, perhaps, would require explanation; and what excuse could he'give? He could not say to any of these, ‘‘I separate from her because she has justly thought her- self injured by Jeanne de Sonnaz.” As, lost in sullen meditation, he went down the Rue Scribe to go to his favorite club, he passed close by Correze. Correze was walking with a German margrave, who nodded to Zouroff with a little greeting, for they were friends; Correze looked him full in the face, and gave him no salutation. The insolence (as it seemed to him) filled up the measure of his wrath. : *‘T will slit the throat of that nightingale,” he muttered, as they passed. At that moment a friend stopped him in some agitation. ‘*Good heavens, have you not heard? Paul de Sonnaz is dead; his horse has thrown him just before the door of the club. He fell with his head on the curb-stone; his neck is broken.” Zouroff, without a word, went into the Jockey Club and into the chamber up-stairs, whither they had borne the senseless frame of the Duc de Sonnaz, who had died in an instant, without pain. Zouroff looked down on him, and his own face grew pale and his eyes clouded. Paul de Sonnaz had been a good, simple, unaffected man, bon prince always, and unconscious. of his wrongs; docile to his wife and blinded by her, cordial to his friends and trustful of them. ‘*Poor simpleton! he was very useful to me,” muttered Zouroff, as he stood by the inanimate body of the man he had always deceived. It was of himself he thought, in the unchangeable egotism of a long life of self-indulgence. When Zouroff went to his own house that day he found the usual weekly report from his faithful servant Ivan. Ivan affirm- ed that all things went on as usual and nothing happened, but ventured to add: ‘‘The climate does not seem to suit the princess. She rides a great deal, but she appears to lose strength, and the women say that she sleeps but little.” His sister came to him a little later in that day. ‘‘Tt is of no use for us to quarrel, Sergius,” she saidto him. ‘TI shall do Vera no good in that way. Iam anxious, very apxious: she writes to me as of old, quite calmly, but Ivan writes, on the other hand, that she is ill and losing strength. .-Why do you not recall her? Paul de Sonnaz is dead; his wife must for some time be in retreat. Vera is your shield and safety now; without her Jeanne would marry you.” “Eomicbooks. co