Moths by Ouida — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

Oat a RNS ata MOTHS. sounded, men and women in bright-cvlored stripes took headers into the tide, or pulled themselves about in little canoes; the snowy canvass of the tent shone like a huge white mushroom, and the faces of all the houses were lively with green shutters and awnings brightly striped like the bathers; people, the gayest and best-born people in Europe, laughed and chattered, and made love, and Lady Dolly with them, pacing the deal planks with her pretty high-heeled shoes; but for all that she was wretched. . ; She was thinking to herself, **‘ What on earth shall I do with er ?” It ruined her morning. It clouded the sunshine. It spoiled her cigarette. It made the waltzes sound like dirges. It made her chief rival look almost good-looking toher. It made a gown, combined of parrots’ breasts and passion-flowers that she was oing to wear in the afternoon, feel green and yellow and bilious in her anticipation-of it, though it was quite new and a wonder. It made her remember her debts. It made her feel that she had not digested those ecrevisses at supper. It made her fancy that her husband might not really goto Java or Jupiter. It was so sudden, so appalling, so bewildering, so endless a question; and Lady Dolly only asked questions, she never answered them or waited for their answers. After all, what could she do with her? She, a pretty woman and a wonderful flirt,who liked to dance to the very end of the _ cotillon, and had as many lovers as she had pairs of shoes. What could she do with a daughter just sixteen years old? ‘* Tt makes one look so old!” she had said to herself, wretched- ly; as she had bobbed and danced in the waves. Lady Dolly was not old; she was not quite thirty-four, and she was as prettr @; if she were seventeen, perhaps prettier; even when she was not **done up,” and she did not need to do herself up very much just yet, really not much, considering—well, considering so many things, that she never went to bed till daylight, that she never ate anything digestible and never drank anything whole- some, that she made her waist fifteen inches round, and de- stroyed her nerves with gambling, chloral, and many other things; considering these, and so many other reasons, besides the one supreme reason that everybody does it, and that you al- ways look a fright if you don’t do it. : _ The thought of her daughter’s impending arrival made Lady oily miserable. Telegrams were such horrible things. Before _ she had had time to realize the force of the impending catas- trophe, the electric wires had brought her tidings that the girl was actually on her way across the sea, not to be stayed by any kind of means, and would be there by nightfall. Nightfall at Trouville! When Lady Dolly in the deftest of summer-evening — toilettes would be just opening her pretty mouth for the first morsel of salmon and drop of Chablis, with the windows opeu, and the moon rising on the sea, and the card-tables ready set, and the band playing within earshot, and the courtiers al] around and at her orders, whether she liked to go out and danea, or stay at home for paker or chemin-de-fer. ea comicbooks (eo)