Moths by Ouida — page 359: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS 303 Vere was sitting at a great oak table in one of the high em- brasured windows; the dog was at her feet; some Greek books were opened before her; the white woollen gown she wore fell from her throat to her feet, like the robe of a nun; she had no ornament except her thick golden hair coiied loosely about her head. Before she realized that she was not alone, her cousin’s wife stood before her, brilliant in color as an enamel of Petitot or a Saxe figure of Koendler; radiant with health, with contentment, with animation, with the satisfaction with all existent things which is the most durable though not the most delicate form of human happiness. Vere rose to her feet, cold, silent, annoyed, angered; she was in her own house, at least her own since it was her husband’s; she could say nothing that was welcome. She was astonished, and stood mute, looking down from the height of her noble stature.on this brilliantly-tinted, porcelain-like figure. For the only time in all her life she, who was Pick-me- up in the world of fashion, was made nervous and held mute. She was impudent, daring, clever, vain, and always successful ; yet for the moment she felt like a frightened child, like a chidden dog, before the amazed cold rebuke of those grand gray eyes that she had once envied to the girl Vere Herbert. | ‘* Well, you don’t seem to like the look of me,” she said at last, and there was a nervous quiver in her high. thin voice. ‘‘ You can’t be said to look pleased no way; and yet Pve come all this way only just to see you: there aren’t many of the others would do as much.” ‘You have come to triumph over me!” thought her hearer; but, with the stately old-world courtesy that was habitual to her, - she motioned to her cousin’s wife to be seated near her, and said, coldly : ‘You are very good. I regret that Szarisla can offer you little recompense for so long a journey. My cousin is well?’ Frank’s first-rate, and the child too,” said Fuschia, Duchess of Mull, with a severe effort to recover the usual light-heartedness with which she faced all things and all subjects, human and di- vine. ‘I called the boy after you, you know, but you never took any notice. Goodness! if it’s not like a convent here; it’s a sort of Bastile, isn’t it? and the windows are all barred up, and I thought they’d never let mein. If I hadn’t had your husband’s order they never would have done till the day of doom. It’s very hard on you.” ‘“My husband sent you here ?” said Vere, with her teeth closed. She felt powerless before a studied insult. ‘‘Sentme? My, no! I don’t do things for people’s sending,” said the young duchess, with some asperity, and her natural courage reviving in her. ‘‘We were bound to come to Berlin because of Ronald Herbert’s marriage. He is marrying a Prus- sian princess. Didn’t you know of that? Doesn’t your husband forward you on your letters? And I said to myself, when I’m as near as that I will go onto Poland and see her. Sol got the order out of your husband. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t say ne very well, anyhow. We saw him as we came through Paris.” ‘COmMmICcboo cS €O