Moths by Ouida — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. 35 what she could ever say to him to thank him enough for all hig care. A peal of shrill laughter pierced her ear and broke her musing. ** Correze, what nymph or naiad have you found? A mermaid in sabots/ Oh! oh! oh!” The laughter pealed and shieked, as fashionable ladies’ laughter will, more often than is pretty; and then through the laughter she heard her mother’s voice. ** Ah—ha! Correze! So this is why you steal away from sup- per when the daylight comes?” Correze, surrounded by the swarming and parti-colored peg: tops, lifted his head, comprehended the situation, and bowed to the ground. ‘I have the honor and happiness, madame, to be of a slight service to Mademoiselle Herbert.” The group of pegtops was composed of Lady Dolly, the Princesse Helene, a Princess Zephine, three other ladies, and several gentlemen, just come to the edge of the sea to bathe. Vere gave one amazed glance at her mother and blushed scar- let. The glanceand the blush were not for the shame of her own misdoings; they were for the shame of her mother’s attire, Vere, who had been overwhelmed with confusion at the loss of her shoes, was very far from comprehending the state of feeling which adopts a fashionable swimming-costume as perfect pro- priety, and skips about in the surf hand-in-hand with a male swimmer, the cynosure of five hundred eye-glasses and lorgnons. She had seen the bathing-dress indeed, but, though she had perceived that it was legless and armless, she had imagined that something must be worn with it to supplement those deficiencies, and she had not in any way reckoned the full enormity of it as it had hung limp over the back of a chair. But on her mother! As the group of living human pegtops swarmed before her on the edge of the sea, and she realized that it was actually her mother, actually her dead father’s wife, who. was before her, with those black and yellow stripes for all-her covering, Vere felt her cheeks and brow burn all over as with fire. They thought she was blushing with shame at herself, but she was blushing for shame for them, and those tight-drawn rainbow- colored stripes that showed every line of the form more than the _ kilted skirts and scant rags of the flsher-girls ever showed theirs, If it were right to come down to dance about in the water with half a dozen men around, how could that which she had done herself be so very wrong? The sea and the sands and the sky seemed to go round with her. She was only conscious of the anger sparkling from her mother’s eyes; she did not heed the tittering and the teasing with which the other ladies surrounded her companion. : ‘‘ Vere!” Lady Dolly for a moment said nothing more. She stood blankly staring at her daughter, at the sunburnt hat, the tumbled hair, the wooden shoes, and at the figure of Correze_ ainst the sun. Pee You—with Correzel” she cried. at length; and Correze, GComicboo (S-CO