Moths by Ouida — page 380: what you’re looking at

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

376 ' _ MOTHS. | “When all was again still, she arose and clothed herself by the light of the burning lamp. She put on all her fur-lined gar ments. She took some rolls of gold, and the papers that proved her identity as the wife of Prince Zouroff, and would enable her to pass the frontier into East Prussia. With these, holding the dog by the collar, she took a lamp in her hand and passed through the vast, dark, silent corridors that were like the streets of a catacomb. There was no one stirring; the household slept the heavy sleep of brandy-drinkers. No one heard her step down the passages and staircase. She undid noiselessly the bolts and bars of a small side door, and went out into the air. It was of a piercing coldness. It was mid-winter and past midnight. The whole landscape was white and ‘frozen. Thestarsseemedtoburnin the steel-hued sky. She went across the stone court to where the stableslay. She would rouse no one, for she knew that they would toa man obey their prince and refuse to permit her departure without his writ- ten order. She went to the stalls of the horses: The grooms were all asleep. She led out the two that she had driven most often since her residence at Szaris!a. Her childish training was of use to her now. She harnessed them, They knew her weil and were docile to her touch, and she put them into the light velvet-lined sledge in which she had been used to drive herself through the fir forests and over the plains. | Her feebleness and her feverishness had left her. She felt strong with the intense strength which comes to women in hours of mental agony. Her slender hands had the force of a Hercules inthem. She had driven so often through all the adjacent lands that the plains were as well known to her as the moors of Bulmer had been to her in childhood. The sledge and the horses’ hoofs made nosound on the frozen snow. She entered the sledge, made the dog lie covered at her feet, and, with a word to the swift oung horses, she drove them ont of the gates and into the woods, etween the aisles of birch and pine. The moonlight was strong ; ‘the moon was at the full. The blaze of Northern lights made the air clear as day. She knew the road and took it unerringly. She drove all night long. Nosense of mortal fear reached her. She seemed to herself frozen asthe earth was. The howl of wolves came often on her ears in the ghastly solitude of the un-— ending lines of dwarfish and storm-riited trees. Atany moment some famished pack might scent her coming, on the air, and meet her or pursue her, and then of her life there would be no more trace than some blood upon the snow, that fresher snow wouldin another hour obliterate. But she never thoughtof that. All she thought of was of the voice which, for her sake, was mute for- . ever. When in the faint red of the sullen winter’s dawn she arrived at the first posting-village with her horses drooping and exhaust- ed, the postmaster was afraid to give her other horses to pass on; she could show him no order from Prince Zouroff; but she had gold with her, and at length induced him to bring out fresh animals, leaving her own with him to be sent back on the mor- row to Szarisla. The postmaster was terrified at what he had ae | comicbooks/co