Moths by Ouida — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

40 MOTHS. theater, and the lights went round with her. The jests fell on deaf ears so far as she was concerned; the dazzling little scenes danced before her sight; she could only see the heavy form of Zouroft cast down in his velvet chair, with his eyes half shut, and his thick eyebrows drawn together in a frown that did not relax. ‘‘He must mean it,” she thought. ‘‘But how odd! Good Heavens! that he should care—that he should think—of what is fit or unfit!” | | And it made her laugh convulsively, in a sort of spasm of mirth, for which the gestures and jokes of the scene gave excuse. Yet she had never felt so wretched, never so nearly understood what shame and repentance meant. In the entr’acte Zouroff changed his place, and took a vacant chair by Lady Dolly, and took up her fan and played with it. ‘¢Miladi, we have always been friends, good friends, have we not?” he said, with the smile that she hated. ‘‘ You know me well, and can judge me without flattery. What will you say if I tell you that I seek the honor of your daughter’s hand?’ He folded and unfolded the fan as he spoke. The orchestra. played at that moment loudly. Lady Dolly was silent. There was a contraction at the corners of her pretty rosebud-like mouth. ‘* Any mother could have but one answer to you,” she replied, with an effort. ‘‘ You are too good, and I am too happy!” ‘‘T may speak to her, then, to-morrow, with your consent?” he added. ‘Let me speak to her first,” she said, hurriedly; ‘‘she is so young.” : ‘*As you will, madame! Place myself and all I have at her feet.” ‘“What can you have seen in her! Good Heavens!” she cried, in animpulse of amaze. “She has avoided me!” said Sergius Zouroff, and spoke the | truth; then added, in his best manner, ‘‘ And is she not your child?—pulchra, fila pulchrior?—pardon the stale quotation for sake of the eternal truth.” The violins chirped softly as waking birds at dawn; the satin curtain drew up; the little glittering scene shone again in the wax-light. Lady Dolly gasped a little for breath. ‘‘Itis very warm here,” she murmured. ‘‘ Don’t you think if a window were opened? And then you have astonished me oY Eda eS 4 She shook double her usual drops of chloral out into her glass that night, but they did not give her sleep. ‘“‘IT shall never persuade her!” she thought, gazing with dry, hot eyes at the light swinging before her mirror. Theeyes of Vere seemed to look at her in their innocent, scornful serenity, and the eyes of Vere’s father, too. ‘Do the dead ever come back?” she thought. ‘‘Some people say they do.” a _. And Lady Dolly, between her soft sheets, shivered, and felt frightened and old. | he was on the edge of a crime, and she had a conscience, — a ‘ * - ‘ e ~ - ‘ JS Pe eS —— . > - “ ye we | * — « . “—e ! Sih wif Lenya ty , comicbooks.com