Moths by Ouida — page 7: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. ** What in the world shall I do with her, Jack?” sie sighed ta ber chief counsellor. The chief counsellor opened his lips, answered, ‘‘ Marry her!” then closed them on a big cigar. ‘Of course! One always marries girls; how stupid you are!’ seid Lady Dolly, peevishly. | The counsellor smiled grimly... ‘* And then you will be a grand- mother,” he said, with a cruel relish: he had just paid a bill ata bric-a-brac shop for her, and it had left him unamiable. ‘*I suppose you think that witty,’ said Lady Dolly, with delicate contempt. ‘‘ Well, Helene, there, is a great-grand- mother, and look at her!” Helene was a Prussian princess, married toa Russian minister; she was arrayed in white, with a tender blending about it of all the blues in creation, from that of a summer sky to that of a lapis lazuli ring; she had a quantity of fair curls, a broad hat wreathed with white lilac and convolvulus, a complexion of cream, teeth of pearl, a luminous and innocent smile; she was talking at the top of her voice and munching chocolate; she had a circle of young men round her; she looked, perhaps, if you wished to be ill-natured, eight-and-twenty. Yet a great-grand:- mother she was, and the ‘* Almanach de Gotha” said so, and, alas! said her age. ‘* You won’t wear so well as Helene. You don’t take care of yourself,” the counsellor retorted, with a puff of smoke between each sentence. ‘What!’ screamed Lady Dolly, so that her voice rose above the din of all the other voices, the sound of the waves, the click- clack of the high heels, and the noise of the band. Not take care of herself!—she!—who had every fashionable medicine that came out, and, except at Trouville, never would be awakened for any earthly thing till one o’clock in the day. ‘¢You don’t take care of yourself,” said the counsellor. ‘‘No; ou eat heaps of sweetmeats; you take too much tea, too much ice, too much sonp, too much wine, too much everything. You ‘Oh, if you mean to insult me and call me a drunkaru--—” said Lady Dolly, very hotly, flushing up a little. ‘‘You smoke quite awfully too much,” pursued her companion, immovably. It hurts ws, and can’t be good for you. Indeed all you women would be dead if you smoked right; you don’t smoke right; you send all your smoke out, chattering; it never gets into your mouth even, and so that saves you all; if you drew it in, as we do, you would be dead, all of you. Who was the first woman that smoked, I often wonder?” ‘‘The idea of my not wearing as well as Helene,” pursued Lad Dolly, unable to forget the insult. ‘‘ Well, there are five-and- twenty years between us, thank goodness, and more!” ‘‘T say you won't,” said the counsellor, ‘‘not if you go on as you do, screaming all night over those cards and taking quarts of chloral because you can’t sleep. Why can’t you sleep? / can.” | ‘¢ All the lower animals sleep like tops,” said Lady Dolly. / co comic 200KS