Moths by Ouida — page 357: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. x 308 Zouroff frowned. ‘*My wife can always return if she please,” he said, evasively. Would she return? He could not see the Duchesse de Sonnaz, who was surround. ed by her family and that of her husband, in the first hours of a terrible shock to her nerves; and without her counsels, her per- mission, he dared do nothing. ‘*T will write to Vera,” he promised his sister; but she could not persuade him to write then and there. ‘‘Szarisla is healthy enough,” he answered, impatient of her fears, ‘‘ Besides, a hata who can ride for many hours a day cannot be very weak.” He knew Szarisla was a place that was trying tothe health by reason of its bitter cold springs and its scorching summers, with a noxious exhalations of its marshes. But he would not con- ess it. ‘¢She could return if she chose,” he added, to put an end to the remonstrances of the Princess Nelaguine. ‘‘As for her health, if you are disturbed about it, send any physician you like that ou employ to see her; she has never been so strong as she was Sa ee the birth of that dead child in Russia.” ‘‘T shall not send a physician to her, as if she were mad,” an- swered his sister, with anger. *¢ Send Correze,” said Zouroff, with a sardonic little laugh. ‘¢ Would you had died yourself, Sergius, instead of that poor imbecile whom you cheated every hour that he lived!” Zouroft shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘I regret, Paul—pauvre gare con!” he said, simply, and said the truth. ‘‘ Why do you not regret your own sins?” ‘‘ They are the only things that have ever amused me,” he re- plied, with equal truth. ‘‘And I thought you were an esprit fort, Nadine: I thought your new school of thinkers had all agreed that there is no such thing as sin any more—nothing but hereditary bias, for which no one is responsible. If weare not to quarrel again, pray make me no scenes.” ‘¢We will not quarrel; it is childish. But you promise me to recall your wife?” , ‘‘T promise you—yes.” Baye ‘‘When I shall have seen Jeanne,” he added, in his own thoughts. | Be Nadine Nelaguine went to her own house angered, dissatisfied, and anxious. She was aclever woman, and she was penetrated with the caution of the world, as a petrified branch with the lime that hardens it. She smiled cheerfully always when she spoke — of her sister-in-law, and said tranquilly in society that she had not Vera’s tastes, she could not dedicate herself to solitude and the Polish poor as Vera did. She kept her own counsel, and did not call in others to witness her pain or her dilemma, She knew that the sympathy of society is chiefly curiosity, and that when it has any title to pity it is quite sure to sneer. She held her peace and waited, but her often callous hearé | ached with a heavy regret and anxiety. ‘‘She has so much to endure!” she thought, with hot tears in comicbooks (e(@)