Moths by Ouida — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

Vea ADs iy MOTHS. how be safer than properly married to a person desirable in every way——’ Lady Dolly paused a moment to take breath; she felt a little | excited, a little exhausted, and there was that in the colorless face of her daughter which frightened her, as she had been frightened in her bed, wondering if the dead came back on earth. She made a little forward caressing movement, and would have kissed her again, but Vere moved away; her eyes were darkened with anger, and her lips were tremulous. “Prince Zouroff is a coward,” said the girl, very low but © very bitterly. “He knows that I loathe him, and that I think him a bad-man. How dare he—how dare he—insult me so!” “Insult you!” echoed Lady Dolly, with almost a scream. “Are you mad? Insult you! A man that all Europe has been wild to marry these fifteen years past! Insult you! A man who offers you an alliance that will send you out of a room before everybody except actually princesses of the bloodi? Insult you! When was ever an offer of marriage thought an insult in society?’ “T think it can be the greatest one,” said Vere, still under aer breath, “You think! Who are you, to think? Pray have no thoughts at all, unless they are wiser than that. You are startled, my dear; that is perhaps natural. You did not see he was in love with you, though every one else.did.”’ “Oh, do not say such horrid words!” | The blood rushed to the child’s face, and she covered her eyes with her hands. She was hurt, deeply, passionately—§| hurt and humiliated, in a way that her mother could no more : have understood than she could have understood the paths | traveled by the invisible stars, “Really you are too ridiculous,” she said, impatiently. Even} you, I should think, must know what love means. I believe’ even at Bulmer you read ‘Waverley.’ You have charmed Ser- gius Zouroff, and it is a very great victory, and if all this sur. Hf prise and disgust at it be not a mere piece of acting, you a must be absolutely brainless, absolutely idiotic. You cannot ~~ seriously mean that a man insults you when he offers you a if position that has. been coveted by half Europe.” | ‘ “When he knows that I cannot endure him,” said Vere, with ~ flashing eyes; “it is an insult; tell him so from me. Oh, F mother—mother! that you could even call me to hear sucha thing. . . I do not want to marry any one; I do not wish ‘, ever to marry. Let me go back to Bulmer. I am not made ; for the world, nor it for me.” ‘ “You are not, indeed!” said her mother, in exasperation and disgust, feeling her own rage and anxiety like two strangling hands at her throat, “Nevertheless, into the world you will go as Princess Zouroff. The alliance suits me, and I am not easily dissuaded from what I wish. Your heroics count for nothing. All girls of sixteen are gushing and silly. I was too. It is an immense thing that you have sucha stroke of good fortune. I % quite despair of you. You are very lovely, but you are old-fash- ioned, pedantic, unpleasant. You have no chic. You have no | | comicbooks.com