Moths by Ouida — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

**o you believe in God, Lady Stoat?” **{n God?” echoed Lady Stoat, shocked and amazed. £*Do you or not?” | ‘“‘“My dear! Goodness! Pray do not say such things to me, As ‘i ers an infidel!—J/” ‘Then how can you bid me take his name in vain, and m Prince Zouroft?” : ae war! ‘‘I do not see the connection,” began Lady Stoat, vaguely, and very wearily. ‘“‘{ have read the marriage service,” said Vere, with a passing heat upon her pale cheeks for a moment. Lady Stoat for once was silent. She was very nearly going to reply that the matriage service was of old date and of an exaggerated style; that it was not in good taste, and in no degree to be interpreted literally; but such an avowal was impossible to a:;woman who revered the ritual of her Church and was bound to accept it unquestioned. ‘So she was silent and vanquished—so far. ‘*‘ May I go now?” said Vere. | *‘ Certainly, love, if you wish; but you must let me talk to you again. lam sure you will change and please your mother—your lovely little mother!—whom you ought to live for, you naughty child, so sweet and so dear as she is,” ““She has never lived for me,” thought Vere, but she did not say so; she merely made the deep curtsey she had learned at Bulmer Chase, which had the serene and stately grace in it of another century than her own, and, without another word, passed out of the room. ‘*@uel enfant terrible!”? murmured Lady Stoat, with a shiver and a sigh. Lady Stoat was quite in earnest, and meant well. She knew perfectly that Sergius Zouroff was a man whose vices were such as the world does not care even to name, and that his temper was that of a savage bull-dog allied to the petulant exactions of a spoilt child. She knew that perfectly, but she had known as bad things of her own son-in-law, and had not stayed her own daugh- ter’s marriage on that account. | Position was everything, Lady Stoat thought, the man himself nothing. Men were all sadly much alike, she believed. Being a woman of refined taste and pure life, she did not even think about such ugly things as male vices. / Lady Stoat was one of those happy people who only see just so much as they wish to see. It is the most comfortable of all myopisms. She had had, herself, a husband far from virtuous, but she had always turned adeaf ear to all who would have told her of his failings.. ‘‘I do my own duty; that is enough for me,” she would answer, sweetly; and, naturally, she wondered why other woman could not be similarly content with doing theirs— when they had a position. Without a position she could imagine, good woman though she was, that things were very trying, and that people worried more. As for herself, she had never worried, and she had no .sympathy with worry in an shape. So that when Lady Dolly came to her weeping, excited, “‘comicbooks (0)