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MOTHS By OUIDA author of "tuck," "tricotrin," stratilmore," etc. " Like unto moths fretting a garment."—Psalm A NEW EDITION Honfcon CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY i§95 Unguiticb to MY OLD FRIEND ALGERNON. BORTHWICK in memory of the days of "rucK" and as a slight token of an unchanged regard and esteem. Le monde aime le vice et halt l'amour; le vice est bon enfant, un viveur, un dr61e, un gourmet; il tient bonne table, et vous invite sou vent; l'amour, au contraire, est un pddant, un solitaire, un misanthrope, un va-nu- pieds; il ne vous amuse pas; vous criez vite, "k la ianterne!"—Rware3. moths CHAPTER L Lady Dolly ought to have been perfectly happy. She had every- thing that can constitute the joys of a woman of her epoch. She was at Trouville. She had won heaps of money at play. She had made a correct book on the races. She had seen her chief rival looking bilious in an unbecoming gown. She had had a letter from her husband to say he was going away to Java or Jupiter or somewhere indefinitely. She wore a costume which had cost a great tailor twenty hours of anxious and continuous reflection. Nothing but baptiste indeed! but baptiste sublimised and apotheo- sised by niello buttons, old lace, and genius. She had her adorers and slaves grouped about her. She had found her dearest friend out in cheating at cards. She had dined the night before at the Maison Persanne and would dine this night at the Maison Nor- mande. She had been told a state secret by a minister which she knew it was shameful of him to have been coaxed and chaffed into revealing. She had had a new comedy read to her in manuscript- form three months before it would be given in Paris, and had screamed at all its indecencies in the choice company of a Serene Princess and two ambassadresses as they all took their chocolate in their dressing-gowns. Above all, she was at Trouville, having left half a million of debts behind her strewn about in all directions, and standing free as air in gossamer garments on the planks in the summer sunshine. There was a charming blue sea beside her; a balmy fluttering breeze around her, a crowd of the most fashionable sunshades of Europe before her, like a bed of full-blown anemones. She had floated and bobbed and swum and splashed semi-nude, with all the other mermaids d la mode, and had shown that she must still be a pretty woman, pretty even in daylight, or the in 311 would not have looked at her so: and yet with all this she was i.Dt enjoying herself. It was very hard. The yachts came and went, the sands glittered, the muffc sounded, men and women in bright-coloured stripes took headers B 2 MOTES. Into the tide or pulled themselves about in little canoes; the snowj canvas 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 shoos ; but for all that she was wretched. She was thinking to herself, " What on earth shall I do vrith her t" 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 to her. It made a gown com- bined of parrots' breasts and passion-flowers that she was going 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 go to 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 ? " It makes one look so old!" she had said to herself wretchedly, as she had bobbed and danced in the waves. Lady Dolly was not old; she was not quite thirty-four, and she was as pretty as 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 digest- ible, and never drank anything wholesome, that she made her waist fifteen inches round, and destroyed her nerves with gambling, chloral, and manv other things; considering these, and so many oilier reasons, besides the one supreme reason that everybody does it, and that you always look a fright if you don't do it. The thought of her daughter's impending arrival made Lady Dolly miserable. Telegrams were such horrible things. Before she had had time to realize the force of the impending catastrophe 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 her first morsel of salmon and drop of Chablis, with the windows open and the moon rising on the sea, and the card-tables ready set, and the band playing within earshot, and the courtiers all around and at her orders, whether she MOTHS. 3 liKed to go out and dance, or stay at home for poker or cheminr de-fer. " What in the world shall I do with her, Jack ?" she sighed to her chief counsellor. The chief counsellor opened his lips, answered, " Marry her I " then closed them on a big cigar. " Of course ! One always marries girls ; how stupid you are 151 said 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 at a bric-dr-brac shop for her and it had left him unamiable. " I suppose you think that witty," said Lady Dolly with deli- cate contempt, " Well, Helene there is a great-grandmother, and look at her I " Helene was a Prussian princess, married to a 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-grandmother she was, and the " Almanack de Gotka " 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 ; you eat heaps of sweetmeats. You take too much tea, too much ice, too much soup, too much wine ; too much everything. You " " Oh ! if you mean to insult me and call tco a drunkard——!" said Lady Dolly very hotly, flushing up a little. " You smoke quite awfully too much," pursued her companion immovably. " It hurts us, 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 oi my not wearing a3 well as Helene," pursued Lady Dolly, unable to forgot the insult. "Well, there are five and twenty years between us, thank goodness, and more! " 4 MOTES. " I 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 ? 1 can." "All the lower animals sleep like tops," said Lady Dolly. " You seem to have been reading medical treatises, and they haven't agreed with you. Go and buy me a' Petit Journal.'" The counsellor went grumbling and obedient—a tall, good- looking, well-built, and very fair Englishman, who had shot every- thing that was shootable all over the known world. Lady Dolly smiled serenely on the person who glided to her elbow, and took the vacant place; a slender, pale, and graceful Frenchman, the Due de Dinant of the vieille souche. "Dear old Jack gets rather a proser," she thought, and she began to plan a fishing picnic with her little Duke; a picnic at which everybody was to go barefooted, and dress like peasants— real common peasants, you know, of course,—and dredge, didn't they call it, and poke about, and hunt for oysters. Lady Dolly had lovely feet, and could afford to uncover them; very few of her rivals could do so, a fact of which she took cruel advantage, and from which she derived exquisite satisfaction in clear shallows and rock pools. " The donkeys! they've cramped themselves in tight boots!" she said to herself, with the scorn of a superior mind She always gave her miniature feet and arched insteps their natural play, and therein displayed a wisdom of which it must be honestly confessed, the rest of her career gave no glimpse. The counsellor bought the "Petit Journal" and a "Figaro" for himself, and came back ; but she did not notice him at all. A few years before the neglect would have made him miserable; now it made him comfortable—such is the ingratitude of man. He sat down and read the " Figaro " with complacency, while she, under her sunshade, beamed on Gaston de Dinant, and on four or five others of his kind; youngsters without youth, but, as a compen- sation for the loss, with a perfect knowledge of Judic's last song, and Dumas' last piece, of the last new card-room scandal, and the last drawing-room adultery; of everything that was coming out at the theatres, and of all that was of promise in the stables. They were not in the least amusing in themselves, but the chatter of the world has almost always an element of the amusing in it, because it ruins so many characters, and gossips and chuckles so merrily and so lightly over infamy, incest, or anything else that it thinks only fun, and deals with such impudent personalities. At any rate they amused Lady Dolly, and her Due de Dinant did more; they arranged the picnic,—without shoes, that was indispensable, without shoes, and in real peasant's things, else there would be no joke—they settled their picnic, divorced half a dozen of their friends, conjectured about another half-dozen all those enormities which modern society would blush at in the Bible but, out of it, whispers and chuckles over very happily; speculated about the MOTES. 6 few unhappy unknowns who had dared to enter the magic precincts of these very dusty sands; wondered with whom the Prince of Wales would dine that night, and whose that new yawl was, that had been standing off since morning flying the R. Y. S. flag; and generally diverted one another so well, that beyond an occasional passing spasm of remembrance, Lady Dolly had forgotten her im- pending trial. " I think I will go in to breakfast," she said at last, and got up. It was one o'clock, and the sun was getting hot; the anemone-bed began to heave and be dispersed; up and down the planks the throng was thick still, the last bathers, peignoir-enwrapped, were sauntering up from the edge of the sea. The counsellor folded his " Figaro," and shut up his cigar-case ; his was the useful but humble task to go home before her and see that the Moselle was iced, the prawns just netted, the strawberries just culled, and the cutlets duly frothing in their silver dish. The Due de Dinant sauntered by her with no weightier duty than to gaze gently down into her eyes, and buy a stephanotis or a knot of roses for her bosom when they passed the flower-baskets. " What are they all looking at ? " said Lady Dolly to her escort suddenly. Bodies of the picturesque parti-coloured crowd were all streaming the same way, inland towards the sunny white houses, whose closed green shutters were all so attractively suggestive of the shade and rest to be found within. But the heads of the crowd were turning back seaward, and their eyes and eyeglasses all gazed in the same direction. Was it at the Prince? Was it at the President? Was it the Channel fleet had hove in sight ? or some swimmer drowning, or some porpoises, or what ? No, it was a new arrival. A new arrival was no excitement at Trouville if it were somebody that everybody knew. Emperors were commonplace ; ministers were nonentities; marshals were monotonous ; princes were more numerous than th6 porpoises; and great dramatists, great singers, great actors, great erators, were all there as the very sands of the sea. But an arrival of somebody that nobody knew had a certain interest, if only as food for laughter. It seemed so queer that there should be such people, or that existing, they should venture there. " Who is it ? " said Trouville, in one breath, and the women laughed, and the men stared, and both sexes turned round by common consent. Something lovelier than anything there was coming through them as a sunbeam comes through dust. Yet it wore nothing but brown holland! Brown holland at Trouville may be worn indeed, but it is brown holland transfigured, subli- mated, canonised, borne, like Lady Dolly's baptiste, into an apo- theosis of ecru lace and floss silk embroideries, and old point cravats, and buttons of repousse work, or ancient smalto; brown holland raised to the empyrean, and no more discoverable to the ordinary naked eye than the original flesh, fish, or fowl lying at 0 MOTHS. the roof of a good cook's mayonnaise is discernible to the unedu- cated palate. But this was brown holland naked and not ashamed, unadorned and barbaric, without any attempt at disguise of itself, and looking wet and wrinkled from sea-water, and very brown indeed beside the fresh and ethereal costumes of the ladies gathered there, that looked like bubbles just blown in a thousand hues to float upon the breeze. " Brown holland! good gracious! " said Lady Dolly, putting up her eyeglass. She could not very well see the wearer of it; there were so many men between them; but she could see the wet, clinging, tumbled skirt which came in amongst the wonderful garments of the sacred place, and to make this worse there was an old Scotch plaid above the skirt, not worn, thrown on anyhow, as she said pathetically, long afterwards. " What a guy ! " said Lady Dolly. " What a face!" said the courtiers; but thev said it under their breath, being wise in their generation, and praising no woman before another. But the brown holland came towards her, catching in the wind, and showing feet as perfect as her own. The brown holland stretched two hands out to her, and a voice cried aloud— " Mother! don't you know me, mother ? " Lady Dolly gave a little sharp scream, then stood still. Hei pretty face was very blank, her rosy small mouth was parted ir amaze and disgust. " In that dress ! " she gasped, when the position became deal to her and her senses returned. But the brown holland was clinging in a wild and joyous kind of horrible, barbarous way all about her, as it seemed, and the old Scotch plaid was pressing itself against her baptiste skirts. "Oh, mother! how lovely you are! Not changed in the very least! Don't you know me. Oh dear! don't you know me ? I am Yere." Lady Dolly was a sweet-tempered woman by nature, and only made fretful occasionally by maids' contretemps, debts, husbands, and other disagreeable accompaniments of life. But, at this moment, she had no other sense than that of rage. She could have struck her sunshade furiously at all creation; she could have fainted, only the situation would have been rendered more ridi- culous still if she had, and that consciousness sustained her; th6 Bands, and the planks, and the sea, and the sun, all went round her In a whirl of wrath. She could hear all her lovers, and friends, And rivals, and enemies tittering ; and Princess Helene Olgarouski, wtio was at her shoulder, said in the pleasantest way— ; " Is that your little daughter, dear ? Why, she Is quite a woman ! A new beauty for Monseigneur." Lady Dolly could kave slain her hunlden dream of sunshine, of song, of the sea, of the summer. She had found her lost Northumbrian safe, but in agonies of terror and self-reproach, and the amiable German for once very seriously angry. But Vere was not to be ruffled or troubled; she smiled at all reproof, scarcely hearing it, and put her cabbage rose and her 12 MOTH8. sprigs of lavender in water. Then she fell fast asleep on a couch, from fatigue and the warmth of the Norman sun, and dreamed of the blue gentian of the Alps that she had never seen, and of the music of the voice of Correze. When she awoke some hours had passed—the clock told her it was two. She never thought of moving from her prison. The ricketty white and gold door would have given way at a push, but to her it was inviolate. She had been reared to give obedience in the spirit as well as the letter. She thought no one had ever had so beautiful a day as this morning of hers. She would have believed it a dream, only there were her rose and the homely heads of the lavender. The German brought Euclid and Sophocles into the prison- chamber, but Yere put them gently away. " I cannot study to-day," she said. It was the first time in her life that she had ever said so. The Fraulein went away weeping, and believing that the heavens would fall. Vere, with her hands clasped behind her head, leaned back and watched the white clouds come and go above the sea, and fancied the air was still full of that marvellous and matchless voice which had told her at last all that music could be. " He is the angel Raphael! " she said to herself. It seemed to her that he could not be mere mortal man. Her couch was close to the glass doors of the room, and they opened into one of the scroll-work balconies which embroidered the fantastic front of the Chalet Ludoff. The room was nominally upstairs, but literally it was scarcely eight feet above the ground without. It was in the full hot sunshine of early afternoon when the voice she dreamed of said softly, " Mademoiselle Herbert! " Vere roused herself with a start, and saw the arm of Corr&ze leaning on the balcony and his eyes looking at her; he was stand- ing on the stone perron below. "I came to bid you farewell," he said softly. " I go to Germany to-night. You are a captive, I know, so I dared to speak to you thus." " You go away !" To the girl it seemed as if darkness fell over the sea and shore. " Ah! we princes of art are but slaves of the ring after all. Yes, my engagements have been made many months ago: to Baden, to Vienna, to Moscow, to Petersburg; then Paris and London once more. It may be long ere we meet, if ever we do, and I dare to call myself your friend, though you never saw my face until this morning." " You have been so good to me," murmured Vere; and then stopped, not knowing what ailed her in the sudden sense of sorrow, loss, and pain, which came over her as she listened. " Oh, aitro 1" laughed Correze, lifting himself a little higher, M0TE8. 43 and leaning more easily on the iron of the balcony. " I found you a pair of wooden shoes, a cup of milk, and a cabbage rose. Sorry things to offer to an enchanted princess who had missed her road! My dear, few men will not be willing to be as good to you as you will let them be. You are a child. You do not know your power. I wonder what teachers you will have? I wish you could go untaught, but there is no hope of that." Vere was silent. She did not understand what he meant. She understood only that he was going far away—this brilliant and beautiful stranger who had come to her with the morning sun. " Mademoiselle Herbert," continued Correze, " I shall sound like a preacher, and 1 am but a graceless singer, but try and keep yourself 1 unspotted from the world.' Those are holy words, and I am not a holy speaker, but try and remember them. This world you will be launched in does no woman good. It is a world of moths. Half the moths are burning themselves in feverish frailty, the other half are corroding and consuming all that they touch. Do not become of either kind. You are made for something better than a moth. You will be tempted; you will be laughed at; you will be surrounded with the most insidious sort of evil example, namely, that which does not look like evil one whit more than the belladonna berry looks like death. The women of your time are not, perhaps, the worst the world has seen, but they are certainly the most contemptible. They have dethroned grace; they have driven out honour; they have succeeded in making men ashamed of the sex of their mothers ; and they have set up nothing in the stead of all they have destroyed except a feverish frenzy for amuse- ment and an idiotic imitation of vice. You cannot understand now, but you will see it—too soon. They will try to make you like them. Do not let them succeed. You have truth, innocence, and serenity—treasure them. The women of your day will ridicule you, and tell you it is an old-fashioned triad, out of date like the Graces; but do not listen. It is a triad without which no woman is truly beautiful, and without which no man's love for her can be pure. I would fain say more to you, but I am afraid to tell you what you do not know; and woe to those by whom such know- ledge first comes 1 Mon enjant, adieu." He had laid a bouquet of stephanotis and orchids on the sill of the window at her feet, and had dropped out of sight before she had realised his farewell. When she strained her eyes to look for him, he had already disappeared. Tears blinded her sight, and fell on the rare blossom? of his gift. " I will try—I will try to be what he wishes," she murmured to the flowers. " If only I knew better what he meant." The time soon came when she knew too well what he meant. Now she sat with the flowers in her lap and wondered wearily, and sobbed silently, as if her heart would break. Oorr&ze was gone. MOTHS. CHAPTER IV. At sunset Lady Dolly returned, out of temper. They had been becalmed again for two hours, the sea all of a sudden becoming like oil, just to spite her, and they had played to while away the time, and the Grand Duchess had won a great deal of her money, besides smoking every one of her cigarettes and letting the case fall through the hatchway. " I will never go out with that odious Russian again—never! the manners of a cantiniere and the claws of a croupier! " she said in immeasurable disgust of the august lady whom she had idolised in the morning; and she looked in at the little study, when she reached home, to allay her rage with making some one uncom- fortable. " Are you sufficiently ashamed of yourself, Vera?" she said as she entered. Vere rose, rather uneasily, and with soft sad dewy eyes. " Why should I be ashamed, mother ? " she said simply. " Why ? why ? you ask why ? after compromising yourself, as you did this morning ? " " Compromise ? " Vere had never heard the word. Women who were compro- mised were things that had never been heard of at Bulmer. " Do not repeat what I say. It is the rudest thing you can do," said her mother sharply. "Yes, compromised, hideously compromised—and with Correze, of all persons in the world! You must have been mad!" Vere looked at her stephanotis and orchids, and her young face grew almost stern. " If you mean I did anything wrong, I did no wrong. It was all accident, and no one could have been so kind as—he—was." The ear of Lady Dolly, quick at such signs, caught the little pause before the pronoun. " The world never believes in accidents," she said chillily. "You had better understand that for the future. To be seen coming home in a boat early in the morning all alone with such a man as Correze would be enough to ruin any girl at the outset of her life—to ruin her! " Vere's eyes opened in bewildered surprise. She could not follow her mother's thoughts at all, nor could she see where she had been in any error. " Correze, of all men upon earth!" echoed her mother. " Good heavens! do you know he is a singer ? " " Yes," said Vere softly; hearing all around her as she spoke the sweet liquid melody of that perfect voice which had called the skylark ** a little brother." MO TBS. 45 " A great singer, I grant; the greatest, if you like, but still a singer, and a man with a hundred love affairs in every capital he enters ! And to come home alone with such a man after hours spent alone with him. It was madness, Vera; and it was worse, it was forward, impudent, unmaidenly! " The girl's pale face flushed ; she lifted her head with a certain indignant pride. " You may say what you will, mother," she said quietly. " But that is very untrue." "Don't dare to answer me" said Lady Dolly. "I tell you it was disgraceful, disgraceful, and goodness knows how ever I shall explain it away. Helene has been telling the story to everybody, and given it seven-leagued boots already. True ! who cares what is true or what is not true—it is what a thing looks J I believe everybody says you had come from Havre with Correze! " Vere stood silent and passive, her eyes on her stephanotis and orchids. "Where did you get those extravagant flowers? Surely Jack never " said Lady Dolly suspiciously. " He brought them," answered Vere. " Corrdze ? Whilst I was away ? " " Yes. He spoke to me at the balcony." "Well, my dear, you do Bulmer credit! No Spanish or Italian heroine out of his own operas could conduct herself more audaciously on the first day of her liberty. It is certa nly whal 1 always thought would come of your grandmother's mode ot education. Well, go upstairs in your bedroom and do not leave it until I send for you. No, you can't take flowers upstairs; they are very unwholesome—as unwholesome as the kindness of Correze." Vere went, wistfully regarding her treasures; but she had kept the faded rose and the lavender in her hand unnoticed. "After all, I care most for these," she thought; the homely seaborn things that had been gathered after the songs. When the door had closed on her Lady Dolly rang for her maitre d'hotel. " Pay the Fraulein Schroder three months' salary, and send her away by the first steamer; and pay the English servant whatever she wants and send her by the first steamer. Mind they are both gone when I wake. And I shall go to Deauville the day after to-morrow; probably I shall never come back here." The official bowed, obedient. As she passed through her drawing-rooms Lady Dolly took up the bouquet of Correze and went to her own chamber. " Pick me out the best of those flowers," she said to her maid, " and stick them about all over me; here and there, you know." She was going to dine with the Duchesse de Sonnaz at Deauville. 46 MO TBS. As she went to her carriage the hapless German, quivering and sobbing, threw herself in her path. " Oh, miladi! miladi!" she moaned. " It cannot be true ? You send me not away thus from the child of my heart ? Ten years have I striven to write the will of God, and the learning that is better than gold, on that crystal pure mind, and my life, and my brain, and my soul I do give " " You should have done your duty," said Lady Dolly, wrapping herself up and hastening On. " And you can't complain, my good Schroder; you have got three months' in excess of your wages," and she drew her swan's-down about her and got into her carriage. " Now, on my soul, that was downright vulgar," muttered John Jura. " Hang it all! it was vulgar !" But he sighed as he said it to himself, for his experience had taught him that high-born ladies could be very vulgar'when they were moved to be ill-natured. Correze was at the villa. She saw him a moment before dinner, and gave him her prettiest smile. " Oh, Correze 1 what flowers! I stole some of them, you see. You would turn my child's head. I am glad you are going to Baden!" He laughed, and said something graceful and novel, turned on the old mater pulchra, filia pulchrior. The dinner was not too long, and was very gay. After it everybody wandered out into the gardens, which were hung with coloured lamps and had musicians hidden in shrubberies, dis- coursing sweet sounds to rival the nightingales. The light was subdued, the air delicious, the sea glimmered phosphorescent and starlit at the end of dusky alleys and rose-hung walks. Lady Dolly wandered about with Sergius Zouroff and others, and felt quite romantic, whilst John Jura yawned and sulked; she never allowed him to do anything else while she was amusing herself. Correze joined her ana her Russians in a little path between walls of the quatre-saison rose and a carpet of velvety turf. The stars sparkled through the rose-leaves, the sound of the sea stole up the silent little alley Lady Dolly looked very pretty in a dress of dead white, with the red roses above her and their dropped leaves at her feet. She was smoking, which was a pity—the cigarette did not agree with the roses. "Madame," cried Correze, as he sauntered on and disengaged her a little from the others, " I have never seen anything so ex- quisite as your young daughter. Will you believe that I mean no compliment when I say so ? " " My dear Correze ! She is only a child!" " She is not a child. What would you say, madame, if I told you that for full five minutes I had the madness to think to-day MOTES. 41 that I would pay my forfeit to Baden and Vienna for the sake of staying here ? " " Heaven forbid you should do any such thing! You would turn her head in a week ! " " What would you say, madame," he continued with a little laugh, disregarding her interruption, "what would you say if I told you that I, Correze, had actually had the folly to fancy for five minutes that a vagabond nightingale might make his nest for good in one virgin heart ? What would you say, miladi ? " "My dear Correze, if you were by any kind of possibility talking seriously " " I am talking quite seriously—or let us suppose that I am. What would you say, miladi ? " " I should say, my dear Correze, that you are too entirely captivating to be allowed to say such things even in an idle jest, and that you would be always most perfectly charming in every capacity but one." " And that one is ? " " As a husband for anybody!" "I suppose you are right," said Corr&ze with a little sigh. " Will you let me light my cigarette at yours ? " An hour later he was on his way to Baden in the middle hours of the starry fragrant summer night. CHAPTER V. Raphael de Correze had said no more than the truth of him- self that morning by the sweetbriar hedge on the edge of the Norman cliffs. All the papers and old documents that were needful to prove him the lineal descendant of the great Savoy family of Correze were safe in his bureau in Paris, but he spoke no more of them than he spoke of the many love-letters and imprudent avowals that were also locked away in caskets and cabinets in the only place that in a way could be called his home, his apartment in the Avenue Marigny. What was the use? All Marquis and Peer of Savoy though he was by descent he was none the less only a, tenor singer, and in his heart of hearts he was too keenly proud to drag his old descent into the notice of men merely that he might look like a frivolous boaster, an impudent teller of empty tales. NobUsse oblige, he had often said to himself, resisting temptation in his oft-tempted career, but no one ever heard him say aloud that paternoster of princes. His remembrance of his race had been always with him like a talisman, but he wore it like a talisman, secretly, and shy even of having his faith in it known. J6 MOTHS. Corr&ze, with all his negligence and gaiety, and spoilt child 02 ihe world though he was, appraised very justly the worth of the world and his place in it. He knew very well that if a rain-storm on a windy night were to quench his voice in his throat for ever, all his troops of lovers and friends would fall away from him, and his name drop down into darkness like any shooting star on an August night. He never deceived himself. " I am only the world's favourite plaything,'' he would say to himself. " If I lost my voice, I should be served like the nightin- gale in Hans Andersen's story. Oh ! I do not blame the world— things are always so; only it is well to remember it. It serves, dke Yorick's skull, or Philip's slave, to remind one that one is mortal." The remembrance gave him force, but it also gave him a tinge of bitterness, so far as any bitterness is ever possible to a sunny, generous, and careless nature, and it made him before everything an artist. When he was very insolent to grand people—which he often was in the caprice of celebrity—those people said to one another, " Ah! that is because he thinks himself Marquis de Correze." But they were wrong. It was because he knew himself a great artist. The scorn of genius is the most boundless and the most arrogant of all scorn, and he had it in him very strongly. The world said he was extravagantly vain; the world was wrong; yet if he had been, it would have been excusable. Women had thrown them- selves into his arms from his earliest youth for sake of his beautiful face, before his voice had been heard; and when his voice had captured Europe there was scarcely any folly, any madness, any delirium, any shame that women had not been ready to rush into for his sake, or for the mere sight of him and mere echo of his song. There is no fame on earth so intoxicating, so universal, so ener- vating, as the fame of a great singer; as it is the most uncertain and unstable of all, the most evanescent and most fugitive, so by compensation is it the most delightful and the most gorgeous; rouses the multitude to a height of rapture as no other art can do, and makes the dull and vapid crowds of modern life hang breath- less on one voice, as in Greece, under the violet skies, men hearkened to the voice of Pindar or of Sappho. ■ The world has grown apathetic and purblind. Critics still rave and quarrel before a canvas, but the nations do not care; quarries of marble are hewn into various shapes, and the throngs gape befortf them and are indifferent; writers are so many that their writings blend in the public mind in a confused phantasmagoria where the colours have run into one another and the lines are all waved and indis- tinct; the singer alone still keeps the old magic power, " the beauty that was Athens' and the glory that was Home's," still holds the MOTHb. 49 divine caduceus, still sways the vast thronged auditorium, till the myriads hold their breath like little children in delight and awe. The great singer alone has the old magic sway of fame; and if he close his lips "the gaiety of nations is eclipsed," and the world 6eems empty and silent like a wood in which the birds are all dead. It is a supreme power, and may well intoxicate a man. Correze had been as little delirious as any who have drunk ol the philtre of a universal fame, although at times it had been too strong for him, and had made him audacious, capricious, inconstant, and guilty of some follies; but his life was pure from any dark reproach. " Soyez gentilhomme," his father had said to him in the little hut on the Pennine Alps, with the snow-fields severing them from all other life than their own, and had said it never thinking that his boy would be more than at best a village priest or teacher; the bidding had sunk into the mind of the child, and the man had not forgotten it now that Europe was at his feet, and its princes but servants who had to wait his time; and he liked to make them wait. " Perhaps that is not gentilhomme,'' he would say in reproach to himself, but it diverted him and he did it very often; most often when he thought angrily that he was but like Hans Andersen's nightingale, the jewelled one, that was thrown aside and despised when once its spring was snapped and broken. If he were only that, he was now at the moment when emperor and court thought nothing in heaven or on earth worth hearing but the jewelled night- ingale, and "the crowds in the streets hummed his song." Yet as the night train bore him through the level meadows, and corn-fields glistening in the moonlight, and the hush of a sleeping world, his eyes were dim and his heart was heavy, and on the soft cushions of the travelling bed they had given him he could not find rest. " The moths will corrupt her," he thought, sadly and wistfully. " The moths will eat all that fine delicate feeling away, little by little; the moths of the world will eat the unselfishness first, and then the innocence, and then the honesty, and then the decency; no one will see them eating, no one will see the havoc being wrought; but little by little the fine fabric will go, and in its place will be dust. Ah, the pity of it! The pity of it! The webs come out of the great weaver's loom lovely enough, but the moths of the world eat them all. One weeps for the death of children, but perhaps the change of them into callous men and worldly women is a sadder thing to see after all." His heart was heavy. Was it love? No; he fancied not; it could not be. Love with him—an Almaviva as much off the stage as on it—had been a charming, tumultuous, victorious thing; a concession rather to the weakness of the women who sought him than to his own; the chief, indeed, but only one amongst many other distractions and triumphs. E 50 MOTHS. It was not love that made his heart go out to that fair-haired child, with the thoughtful questioning eyes. It was rather pity, tenderness, reverence for innocence, rage against the world which would so soon change her ;—poor little moth, dreaming of flying up to heaven's light, and born to sink into earth's-commonest fires 1 Correze did not esteem women highly. They had caressed him into satiety, and wooed him till his gratitude was more than half contempt; but in his innermost heart, where his old faiths dwelt unseen by even his best friends, there was the fancy of what a woman should be, might be, unspotted by the world, and innocent in thought, as well as deed. Such a woman had seemed to him to be in the girl whom he had found by the sea, as the grand glory of the full white rose lies folded in the blush-rose bud. It was too absurd! Her mother had been right, quite right. The little frivolous, artificial woman, with her perruque and her papelitos, had said ail that society would say. She had been wise, and he, in a passing moment of sentiment, a fool. He had scarcely really considered the full meaning of his own words, and where they would have led him had they been taken seriously. He thought now of all the letters lying in those cabinets and caskets at Paris. " What a burnt-sacrifice of notepaper I should have had to make! " he said to himself, and smoked a little, and tried to ridicule himself. Was he, Correze, the lover of great rulers of society, the hero of a hundred and a thousand intrigues and romances, in love with a mere child, because she had serious eyes and no shoes and stock- ings ? bewitched by a young girl who had sat half an hour beside him by a sweetbriar hedge on a cliff by the sea? It was too absurd. From Baden there had come an impatient summons from a dark-haired duchess of the Second Empire, who fancied that she reigued over his life because he reigned over hers like a fatality, an imperious and proud woman whom the lamps in the Avenue Marigny had shone on as she stole on foot, muffled and veiled, to hide her burning face on his breast; he thought of her where she v/as waiting for him, and a little shudder of disgust went over him. He threw open the window of his bed carriage, and leaned his head out, to meet the midnight wind. The train was passing a little village, a few cottages, a pond, a mill, a group of willows silvery in the starlight. From the little green gardens there came a scent of sweetbriar and hedge roses. " Shall I smell that smell all my life ? " he thought impatiently. MOTES. CHAPTER VI. Lady Dolly had a very dear friend. Of course she had five hundred dear friends, but this one she was really fond of; that is to say, she never said anything bad of her, and only laughed at her good-naturedly when she had left a room; and this abstinence is as strong a mark of sincerity nowadays, as dying for another used to be in the old days of strong feelings and the foolish expression of them. This friend was her dear Adine, otherwise Lady Stoat of Stitchley, who had just won the honour of the past year's seasoD by marrying her daughter (a beauty) to a young marquis, who, with the small exceptions of being a drunkard, a fool, and a brute, was everything that a mother's soul could desire; and all the mothers' souls in the great world had accordingly burned for him passionately, and Lady Stoat had won him. Lady Stoat was as much revered as a maternal model of excel- lence in her time as the mother of the Gracchi in hers. She was a gentle-looking woman, with a very soft voice, which she never raised under any provocation. She had a will of steel, but she made it look like a blossoming and pliant reed; she was very religious and strongly ritualistic. When Lady Dolly awoke the next morning, with the vague remembrance of something very unpleasant having happened to her, it was to this friend that she fled for advice as soon as she was dressed; having for that purpose to drive over to Deauville, where Lady Stoat, who thought Trouville vulgar, had a charming little place, castellated, coquettish, Gothic, Chinese, Moorish, all kinds of things, in a pretty pell-mell of bonbon-box architecture, set in a frame of green turf and laurel hedges and round-headed acacias, and with blazing geranium beds underneath its gilded balconies and marqueterie doors. Lady Dolly had herself driven over in the Due de Dinant's panier with his four ponies, and while he went to find out some friends and arrange the coming races, she took her own road to the Maison Perle. " Adine always knows," she thought. She was really fond of her Adine, who was many years older than herself. But for her Adine, certain little bits of nonsense and imprudence in Lady Dolly's feverish little life might have made people talk, and given trouble to Mr. Vanderdecken, absorbed as he might be in Java, Japan, or Jupiter. Lady Stoat of Stitchley was one of those invaluable characters who love to do good for good's own sake, and to set things straight for the mere pleasure of being occupied. As some persons of an old-maidish or old-bachelor turn of mind will go far out of their way to smooth a crease or remove a crumb, though neither be 52 MOTHS. marring their own property, so would Lady Stoat go far out of her way to prevent a scandal, reconcile two enemies, or clear a tangled path. It was her way of amusing herself. She had a genius for management. She was a clever tactician, and her tactics interested her, and employed her time agreeably. If any one in her world wanted a marriage arranged, a folly prevented, a disgrace concealed, or a refractory child brought to reason, Lady Stoat of Stitchley would do it in the very best possible manner. " It is only my duty," she would say in her hushed melodious monotonous voice, and nearly everybody thought Lady Stoat the modern substitute of a saint on earth. To this saint now went Lady Dolly with her troubles and her tale. " What can I do with her, dearest ? " she cried plaintively, in the pretty little morning-room, whose windows looked over the geranium beds to the grey sea. Lady Stoat was doing crewel work; a pale, slight, gracefully made woman with small straight features, and the very sweetest and saddest of smiles. "What young men are there?" said Lady Stoat, now in response, still intent on her crewel work. "I have not thought about them at all since the happiness of my own treasure was secured. By-the-by, T heard from Gwen this morning; she tells me she has hopes—Our Mother in heaven has heard my prayers. Imagine, love, my becoming a grandmama ! It is what I long so for!—just a silly old grandmama spoiling all her pets! I feel I was born to be a grandmama!" " I am so glad, how very charming! " murmured Lady Dolly, vaguely and quite indifferent. " I am so terribly afraid Vers won't please, and I am so afraid of this affair with Correze." " What affair ? with whom ? " asked Lady Stoat of Stitchley, waking from her dreams of being a grandmama. Whereon she told it, making it look very odd and very bad indeed, in the unconscious exaggeration which accompanied Lady Dolly's talk, as inevitably as a great streak of foam precedes and follows the track of a steamer. Lady Stoat was rather amused than shocked. " It is very like Correze, and he is the most dangerous man in the world; everybody is in love with him; Gwendolen was, but all that is nothing; it is not as if he were one of us." " He is one of us! He goes everywhere! " " Oh ! goes !—well; that is because people like to ask him— society is a pigstye—but all that does not alter his being a singer." " He is a marquis, you know, they say ! " " All singers are marquises, if you like to believe them. My dear Dolly, you cannot be serious in being afraid of Correze ? If you are, all the more reason to marry her at once." " She is not the style that anybody likes at all nowadays,1 replied Lady Dolly, in a sort of despair. " She is not the style of MOTHS. 63 the day at all, you know. She has great natural distinction, but I don't think people care for that, and they like chien. She will always look like a gentlewoman, and they like us best when wa don't. I have a conviction that men will be afraid of her. Is there anything more fatal ? Vere will never look like a belle petite, in a tea-gown, and smoke, never! She has gone a hundred years back, being brought up by that horrid old woman. You could fancy her going to be guillotined in old lace like Marie-Antoinette. What can I do ? " " Keep her with you six months, dear," said the friend, who was a woman of some humour. " And I don't think poor Marie- Antoinette had any lace left to wear." " Of course I must keep her with me," said Lady Dolly with exasperation, who was not a woman of humour, and who did not see the jest. Lady Stoat reflected a moment. She liked arranging things, whether they closely concerned her or not. " There is the Chambree's son ? " she said hesitatingly. "I know! But they will want such a dower, and Vere has nothing—nothing ! " " But if she be a beauty ? " " She will be beautiful; she won't be a beauty; not in the way men like now. She will always look cold." " Do they dislike that? Not in their wives, I think; my Gwen looks very cold," said her friend; then added with an innocent im- passiveness, "You might marry her to Jura." Lady Dolly laughed and coloured. "Poor Jack! He hates the very idea of marriage; I don't think he will ever—— " " They all hate it," said Lady Stoat tranquilly. " But they do it when they are men of position; Jura will do it like the rest. What do you think of Serge Zouroff ? " Lady Dolly this time did not laugh; she turned white under- neath Piver's bloom; her pretty sparkling eyes qlanced uneasily. " Zouroff! " she repeated vaguely, " Zouroti • " I think I should try," answered Lady Stoat calmly. " Yes; I do think I should try. By the way, take her to Felicity; you are going there, are you not ? It would be a great thing for you, dear, to marry her this year; you would find it such a bore in the season ; don't I know what it is! And for you, so young as you are, to go to balls with a demoiselle d marier!—my poor little puss, you would die of it." " I am sure I shall as it is!" said Lady Dolly; and her nerves gave way, and she cried. " Make Zouroff marry her," said Lady Stoat soothingly, as if she were pouring out drops of chloral for a fretful child. " Make Zouroff! " echoed Lady Dolly, with a certain intonation that led Lady Stoat to look at her quickly. 54 MOTES. "Has eho done naughty things that she has not told me," thought her oonfidante. " No, I do not fancy so. Poor little pussy I she is too silly not to be transparent." Aloud, she said merely— " Zouroff is middle-aged now; Nadine would be glad to see him take any one; she would not oppose it. He must marry some time, and I don't know anybody else so good as he." " Good!" ejaculated Lady Dolly faintly. She was still startled and agitated, and strove to hide that she was so. " Yere would never," she murmured; " you don't know her; she is the most dreadful child " " You must bring her to me," said Lady Stoat. She was very successful with girls. She never scolded them; she never ridiculed them; she only influenced them in a gentle, imperceptible, sure way that, little by little, made them feel that love and honour were silly things, and that all that really mattered was to have rank and to be rich, and to be envied by others. Lady Stoat never said this; never said, indeed, anything approaching it, but all girls that she took any pains with learned it by heart, nevertheless, as the gospel of their generation. It was her own religion; she only taught what she honestly believed. A little comforted, Lady Dolly left her calming presence; met her little duke and breakfasted with him merrily at an hotel, and drove back to her own chalet to dress for a dinner at the Maison Normande. The doors of Felicite would not open until the first day of Sep- tember, and there were still some dozen days of August yet to pass, and on those days Yere was to be seen occasionally by her mother's side on the beach, and in the villas, and at the races at Deauville, and was clad by the clever directions of Adrienne in charming, youthful dresses as simple as they were elegant. She was taken to the Casino, where the high-born young girls of her own age read, or worked, or played with the pet its chevaux; she was made to walk up and down the flanks, where her innocence brushed the shoulders of Casse-une-Croute, the last new villany out in woman, and her fair cheeks felt the same sunbeams and breeze that fell on all the faded peches a quinze sous. She was taken to the bail des bebes, and felt a pang that was older than her years at seeing those little frizzed and furbelowed flirts of five, and those vain little simpering dandies of three. " Oh, the poor, poor little children !" she thought; " they will never know what it is to be young!" She, even in monastic old Bulmer, had been left a free, open-air, natural, honest child's life. Her own heart here was oppressed and lonely. She missed her faithful old friends; she took no pleasure in the romp and racket that was round her; she understood very little of all that she saw, but the mere sight of it hurt her. Society, mo ma. 56 to this untutored child of the Northumbrian moors, looked so gro- tesque and so vulgar. This Trouville mob of fine ladies and adventuresses, princes and blacklegs, ministers and dentists, reign- ing sovereigns and queens of the theatres, seemed to her a Satur- nalia of Folly, and its laugh hurt her more than a blow would have done. Her mother took her out but little, and the less that she went the less troubled she was. That great mass of varicoloured, noisy life, so pretty as a spectacle, but so deplorable as humanity, dis- mayed and offended her. She heard that these ladies of Deauville, with their painted brows, their high voices, their shrill laughter, their rickety heels, were some of the greatest ladies of Europe; but, to the proud temper and the delicate taste of the child, they seemed loathsome. " You are utterly unsympathetic ! " said her mother, disgusted. " frightfully unsympathetic ! You are guindee, positive, puritan j You have not a grain of adaptability. I read the other day some- where that Madame Recamier, who was always called the greatest beauty of our great-grandmothers' times, was really nothing at all to look at—quite ordinary; but she did smile so in everybody's face, and listen so to all the bores, that the world pronounced her a second Helen. As for you—handsome though you are, and you really are quite beautiful, they say—you look so scornful of every- thing, and so indignant at any little nonsense, that I should not wonder in the least if you never even got called a beauty at all." Lady Dolly paused to see the effect of the most terrible pre- diction that it was in female power to utter. Yere was quite un- moved; she scarcely heard. She was thinking of that voice, clear as the ring of gold, which had said to her— " Keep yourself unspotted from the world." " If the world is nothing better than this, it must be very easy to resist it," she thought in her ignorance, She did not know that from these swamps of flattery, intrigue, envy, rivalry, and emulation there rises a miasma which scarcely the healthiest lungs can withstand. She did not know that though many may be indifferent to the tempting of men, few indeed are impenetrable to the sneer and the smile of women ; that to live your own life in the midst of the world is a harder thing than it was of old to withdraw to the Thebaid; that to risk " looking strange" requires a courage perhaps cooler and higher than the soldier's or the saint's; and that to stand away from the contact ana the custom of your " set" is a harder and a sterner work than it was of old to go into the sanctuary of La Trappe or Port Royal. Autres temps, autres mceurs—but we too have our martyrs. Felicitd wa3 a seaside chateau of the Princes Zouroff, which they had bought from an old decayed French family, and had transformed into a veritable castle of fairy-land. They came to it 66 MOTES. for about three months in as many years; but for beauty and love- liness it had no equal, even amongst the many summer holiday- houses scattered up and down the green coast, from Etretat to the Rochers de Calvados. This year it was full of people: the Prin- cess Nadine Nelaguine was keeping open house there for her brother Sergius Zcuroff. White-sailed yachts anchored in its bay; chasseurs in green and gold beat its woods; riding parties and driving parties made its avenues bright with colour and movement; groups like Watteau pictures wandered in its gardens; there was a little troupe of actors from Paris for its theatre; life went like a song; and Serge Zouroff would have infinitely preferred to be alone with some handsome Tschigan women and many flagons of brandy. Madame Nelaguine was a little woman, who wore a wig that had little pretence about it; and smoked all day long, and read saletes with zest, and often talked them; yet Madame Nelaguine could be a power in politics when she chose, could cover herself with diamonds and old laces, and put such dignity into her tiny person that she once crushed into utter nervousness a new-made empress, whom she considered varnish. She was wonderfully clever, wonderfully learned; she was cunning, and she could be cruel, yet she had in her own way a kind heart; she was a great musician and a great mathematician; she had been an ambassa- dress, and had distinguished herself at great courts. She had had many intrigues of all kinds, but had never been compromised by any one of them. She was considerably older than her brother, and seldom approved of him. " On peut'se debaucher, mats on doit se d£baucher avec de V esprit," she would say : and the modern ways of vice seemed to her void of wit. " You are not even amused," she would add. " If you were amused one could comprehend, but you are not. You spend your fortunes on creatures that you do not even like; you spend your nights in gambling that does not even excite you; you commit vulgarities that do not even divert you, only because everybody else does the same; you caricature monstrous vices so that you make even those no longer terrible, but ridiculous; and if you fight a duel you manage to make it look absurd, you take a surgeon with you! You have no passions. It is passion that dignifies life, and you do not know anything about it, any of you; you know only infamy. And infamy is always so dull; it is never educated. Why do you copy Vitellius ? Because you have not the wit to be either Horace or Caesar." But Sergius Zouroff did not pay any heed to his cleverer sister. His Uraline mines, his vast plains of wheat, his forests and farms, his salt and his copper, and all that he owned, were treasures well- nigh inexhaustible, and although prodigal he was shrewd. He was not a man to be easily ruined, and, as long as his great wealth and his great position gave him a place that was almost royal in the MOTHS. 57 society of Europe, he knew very well that he could copy Vitellius as he chose without drawing any chastisement on him. In a cold and heavy way he had talent, and with that talent he contrived to indulge all excesses in any vice that tempted him, yet remain without that social stigma that has marked before now princes wholly royal. "Everywhere they are glad to see me, and everybody would marry me to-morrow," he would say, with a shrug of his shoulders, when his sister rebuked him. To Felicite drove Lady Dolly with Vere by her side. Yere had been given a white dress and a broad hat with white drooping feathers; she looked very pale, her mother supposed it was with excitement. She thought it the moment to offer a little maternal advice. " Now, dear, this will be quite going into the world for you. Do remember one or two things. Do try to look less grave ; men hate a serious woman. And if you want to ask anything, don't come to me, because I'm always busy; ask Adrienne or Lady Stoat. You have seen what a sweet dear motherly creature she is. She won't mind telling you anything. There is a charming girl there, too, an American heiress, Fuschia Leach; a horrible name, but a lovely creature, and very clever. Watch her and learn all you can from her. Tout Paris lost its head after her utterly this last winter. She'll marry anybody she chooses. Pray don't make me ashamed of you. Don't be sensational, don't be stupid, don't be pedantic; and, for mercy's sake, don't make any scenes. Never look surprised; never show a dislike to anybody; never seem shocked, if you feel so. Be civil all round, it's the safest way in society ; and pray don't talk about mathematics and the Bible. I don't know that there's anything more I can tell you: you must find it^all out for yourself. The world is like whist, reading can't teach it. Try not to blunder, that's all, and—do watch Fuschia Leach." " Is she so very beautiful and good ? " " Good ? " echoed Lady Dolly, desorientee and impatient. " I don't know, I am sure. No, I shouldn't think she was, by any means. She doesn't go in for that. She is a wonderful social success, and men rave about her. That is what I meant. If you watch her she will do you more good than I could if I had patience to talk to you for ever. You will see what the girl of your time must be if she want to please." Vere's beautiful mouth curled contemptuously. " I do not want to please." " That is an insane remark," said Lady Dolly coldly. " If you don't, what do you live for ? " Yere was silent. At dark old Bulmer she had been taught that there were many other things to live for, but she was afraid to say so lest she should be " pedantic " again. 58 MOTES. " That is just the sort of silly thing I hate to hear a girl say, OJ a woman either. Americans never say such things," said Lady Dolly with vivacious scorn. " It's just like your father, who always would go out in the rain when dinner was ready, or read to somebody who had the scarlet fever, or give the best claret to a ploughboy with a sore throat. It is silly; it is unnatural. You should want to please. Why were we put in this world ? " "To make others happier," Vere suggested timidly, her eyes growing dim at her father's name. " Did it make me happier to have the scarlet fever brought home to me ? " said Lady Dolly, irrelevantly and angrily. " That is just like poor Yere's sort of illogical reasonings; I remember them so well. You are exactly like him. I despair of you, I quite despair of you, unless Fuschia Leach can convert you." " Is she my age ? " " A year or two older, I think ; she is perfect now; at five and twenty she will be hideous, but she will dress so well it won't matter. I know for a fact, that she refused your cousin Mull last month. She was very right; he is awfully poor. Still, she'd have been a duchess, and her father kept a bar; so it shows you what she can do." " What is a bar ? " " Oh! pray don't keep asking me questions like that. You make my head whirl. A bar is where they sell things to drink; and her brothers have a great pig-killing place 'down west,' wherever that is." " And she refused my cousin!" " Dear, yes! This is the charming topsy-turvy world we live in—you will get used to it, my dear. They made a fuss because a tailor got to Court last year. I am sure I don't know why they did; if he'd been an American tailor nobody'a have said anything; they wouldn't even have thought it odd. All the world over you meet them ; they get in the swim somehow; they have such heaps of money, and their women know how to wear things. They always look like—what they shouldn't look like—to be sure; but so most of us do, and men prefer it." Vere understood not at all; but she did not venture again to ask for an explanation. Her mother yawned and brushed the flies away pettishly, and called to Lord Jura, who was riding beside their carriage, and had lagged a trifle behind in the narrow sandy road that ran level be- tween green hedges. The high metal roof and gilded vanes of Felicitd were already shining above the low rounded masses of distant woods. It stood on the sea-coast, a little way from Villers- sur-Mer. Vere did not understand why Lord Jura always went with them as naturally as the maids did and the dressing-boxes; but U6 was kind, if a little rough. She liked him. Only why did her MO TUB. 59 mother call him Jack, and quarrel with him so, and yet want him always with her ? Yere thought about it dimly, vaguely, perplexedly, especially when she saw the frank, blue eyes of Jura looking at herself, hard, and long, with a certain sadness and impatience in the gaze, as if he pitied her. The reception at Felicity seemed to Yere to be a whirl of bright hues, pretty faces, and amiable words. The Princess Nadine N61aguine was out on the terrace with her guests, and the Princess kissed her with effusion, and told her she was like a Gainsborough picture. The Princess herself was a fairy-like little woman, with a bright odd Calmuck face and two little brown eyes as bright as a marmoset's. Vere was presented to so many people that she could not tell one from another, and she was glad to be left in her room while her mother, having got into a wonderful gold-embroidered Watteau sacque that she called a tea-gown, went to rejoin the other ladies amongst the roses and the perfumes, and the late after- noon light. When Yere herself, three hours later, was dressed for dinner, and told to tap at her mother's door, she did not feel nervous, be- cause it was not in her nature to be easily made so, but she felt oppressed and yet curious. She was going into the world. And the counsels of Correze haunted her. Lady Dolly said sharply, " Come in!" and Vere entering, be- held her mother for the first time in full war-paint and panoply. Lady Dolly looked sixteen herself. She was exquisitely painted; she had a gown cut en cceur which was as indecent as the heart of woman could desire; jewels sparkled all over her; she was a triumph of art, and looked as exactly like Colifichet of the Bouffes in her last new piece, as even her own soul could aspire to do. " What are you staring at, child ? " she asked of Yere, who had turned rather pale. "Don't you think I look well? What is the matter ? " " Nothing," said Yere, who could not answer that it hurt her to see so much of her mother's anatomy unveiled. "You look as if you sawa ghost," said Lady Dolly impatiently; " you have such a horrid way of staring. Come! " Yere went silently by her side down the wide staircase, lighted by black marble negroes holding golden torches. After the silence, the stillness, the gloom, of her Northumbrian home, with the old servants moving slowly through the dim oak-pannelled passages, the brilliance, the luxury, the glittering lustre, the va et vient of Felicite seemed like a gorgeous spectacle. She would have liked to have stood on that grand staircase, amongst the hothouse flowers, and looked on it all as on a pageant. But her mother swept on into the drawing-rooms, and Vere heard a little murmur of admiration, which she did not dream was for herself, 60 MOTHS. Lady Dolly in her way was an artist, and she had known the right thing to do when she had had Vere clad in white cachemire, with an old silver girdle of German work, and in the coils of hei hair a single silver arrow. Vere was perfect in her stately, serious, yet childlike grace j and the women watching her enter felt a pang of envy. Sergius ZourofF, her host, advancing, murmured a " divinement belle!" and Lady Stoat, watching from a distant sofa, thought to herself, " What a lovely creatine ! really it is trying for poor little pussy." Vere went in to her first great dinner. She said little or nothing. She listened and wondered. Where she sat she could not see her mother nor any one she knew. The young French diplomatist who took her in tried to make himself agreeable to her, but she replied by monosyllables. He thought how stupid these lovely ingenues always were. He had not the open sesame of Corr&ze to the young mute soul. Dinner over, Lady Stoat took possession of her in the charming motherly affectionate way for which she was celebrated with young girls. But even Lady Stoat did not make much way with her; Vere's large serious eyes were calmly watching everything. " Will you show me which is Miss Leach?" she said suddenly. Lady Stoat laughed and pointed discreetly with a fan. " Who has told you about Fuschia Leach ? " she said amusedly. " I will make you known to her presently; she may be of use to you." Vere's eyes, grave as a child's awakened out of sleep into the glare of gas, fastened where her fan had pointed, and studied Miss Leach. She saw a very lovely person of transparent colouring, of very small features, of very slight form, with a skin like delicate porcelain, an artistic tangle of artistically coloured red gold hair, a tiny impertinent nose, and a wonderful expression of mingled impudence, shrewdness, audacity, and resolution. This person had her feet oh an ottoman, her hands behind her head, a rosebud ir her mouth, and a male group around her. "I shall not like her; I do not wish to know her," said Vere slowly. " My dear, do not say so," said Lady Stoat. " It will sound like jealousy, you know—one pretty girl of another " " She is not a lady," said Vere once more. "There you are right," said Lady Stoat. "Very few people are, my love, nowadays. But that is just the sort of thing you must not say. It will get quoted against you, and make you, make you—oh! such enemies, my love! " "Does it matter?" said Vere dreamily. She was wondering what Correze would have thought or did think of Miss Fuschia Leach. " Does it matter to have enemies!" echoed Lady Stoat. " Oh, MOTHS. my sweet Vere! does it matter whether there is a pin sticking into one all day? A pin is a very little thing, no doubt, but it makes all the difference between comfort and discomfort ? " " She is not a lady," said Yere again with a passing frown on her pretty brows. "Oh, my dear! if you wait for that!" Lady Stoat's smile expressed that if she did wait for that she would be more exacting than society. " As for not knowing her—nonsense—you must not object to anybody who is in the same house-party with yourself." " She is extremely pretty," added Lady Stoat. " Those American girls so very often are; but they are all like the poupees de modiste. The very best of them are only very perfect likenesses of the young ladies that try the confections on for us at Pingat's or Worth's, and the dress has always a sort of look of being the first toilette they ever had. I don't know why, for I hear they dress extremely well over there, and should be used to it, but it has that look, and they never get rid of it. No, my dear, no; you are right. Those new people are not gentlewomen any more than men's modern manners are like the Broad Stone of Honour. But do not say so. They will repeat it, and it will not sound kind, and unless you can say what is kind, never say anything." " I would rather have any one I did not respect for an enemy than for a friend," said Yere with a child's obstinacy. Lady Stoat smiled. " Phrases, my love!—phrases! you have so much to learn, my child, as yet." " I will not learn of Miss Leach." " Well, I do not admire her very much myself. But then I belong to an old school, you know. I am an old woman, and have prejudices," said Lady Stoat sweetly. " Miss Leach has the world at her foot, and it amuses her to kick it about like a tennis ball, and show her ankles. I dare say you will do the same, love, in another six months, only you will not show your ankles. All the difference will be there." And then Lady Stoat, who though she called herself an old woman would have been extremely angry if anybody else had called her so, thought she had done enough for once for poor little pussy's daughter, and turned to her own little mild flirtations with a bald and beribboned ambassador. Yere was left alone, to look and muse. Men glanced at her and said what a lovely child slie was; but they kept aloof from her. They were afraid of an ingenue, and there was Fuschia Leach, whose laughter was ringing up to the chandeliers and out to the conservatories—Fuschia Leach, who had never been an ingenue, but a coquette at three years old, and a woman of the world at six. Jura alone came up and seated himself by Vere. " How do you like it ? " he said with an odd little smile. 62 MOTHS. "It is very pretty to look at," answered Vere. " Ah, to be sure. As good as a play when you're new to it, and Awfully like a treadmill when you're not. What do you think of Fuschia Leach ? " Vere remembered Lady Stoat's warning, and answered merely— " I think she is handsome." " I believe you; she threw over your cousin Mull, as if he were dirty boots; so she does heaps of them. I don't koow what it is myself; I think it is her cheek. I always tell Dolly so—I beg your pardon—I mean your mother." Vere had heard him say " Dolly " very often, and did not know why he apologised. " My mother admires her ? " she said with a little interrogation in her voice. Jura laughed. " Or says she does. Women always say they admire a reigning beauty. It looks well, you know. They all swear Mrs. Dawtry is divine, and I'm sure in their hearts they think her rather ugly than otherwise." " Who is Mrs. Dawtry ? " " Don't you know ? Good heavens! But, of course, you don't know anything of our world. It's a pity you ever should. Touch pitch—what is it the old saw says ? " It was the regret of Correze, differently worded. " But the world, as you call it, means men and women ? It must be what they make it. They might make it good if they wished," said Vere with the seriousness that her mother detested. " But they don't wish, you see. That is it," said Jura with a sigh. " I don't know how it is, when once you are in the swim you can't alter things; you must just go along with the rest. One does heaps of thi*tgs one hates only because others do them." " That is ver y contemptible," said Vere, with the disdain that became her ve"/ well coming on her pretty proud mouth. "I think we are contemptible," said Jura moodily; and to so frank a confession there was no reply or retort possible, Vere thought. " It is strange; he said much the same," she murmured, half aloud. " Only he said it like a poet, and you—speak in such an odd way." " How do I speak ? " asked Jura amused. " You speak as if words cost too much, and you were obliged to use as few and choose as bald ones as you could find; English is such a beautiful language, if you read Milton or Jeremy Taylor, or Beaumont and Fletcher, or any of the old divines or dramatists " She stopped, because Jura laughed. " Divines and dramatists! My dear child, we know nothing about such things; we have St. Albans and French adaptations; they're our reading of divinity and the drama. Who was ' he ' that talked like a poet while I talk like a sweep ? " MOTES. 63 "I did not say you talked like a sweep—and I meant the Marquis de Correze." " Oh! your singer ? Don't call him a Marquis, He is the prinos of tenors, that's all." " He is a Marquis," said Yere, with a certain coldness. " They were a very great race. You can see all about it in the ' Livre d'Or' of Savoy; they were like the Marquises Costa de Beauregard, who lost everything in 'ninety-two. You must have read M. de Beauregard's beautiful book, Un homme d'autrefois ? " " Never heard of it. Did the tenor tell yen all that rubbish ? " "Where is mamma, Lord Jura?" said Vere. "I am tired of sitting here." "That's a facer," thought Jura. "And, by Jove, very well given for such a baby. I beg your pardon," he said aloud. " Cor- reze shall be a prince of the blood, if you wish. Your mother is over there; but I doubt if sbe'll thank you to go to her; she's in the thick of it with them; look." He meant that Lady Dolly was flirting very desperately, and enjoying herself very thoroughly, having nearly as many men about her as Miss Fuschia Leach. Yere looked, and her eyes clouded. " Then I think I may go to bed. She will not miss me. Good night." " No, she won't miss you. Perhaps other people will." " There is no one I know, so how can they ? " said Vere inno- cently, and rose to go ; but Sergius Zouroff, who had approached in the last moment, barred her passage with a smiling deference. " Your host will, Mademoiselle Herbert. Does my poor house weary you, that you think of your own room at ten o'clock." " I always go to bed at ten, monsieur," said Yere. " It is nothing new for me." " Let me show you my flowers first," at last said Prince Zouroff. " You know we Russians, born amidst snow and ice, have a passion for tropical houses; will you not come ? " He held out his arm as he spoke. Would it be rude to refuse? Yere did not know. She was afraid it would, as he was her host. She laid her fingers hesitatingly on his offered arm, and was led through the rooms by Prince Zouroff. Fuschia Leach took her hands from behind her head, and stared; Lady Dolly would have turned pale, if she had not been so well painted; Lady Stoat put her eyeglass up, and smiled. Piince Zouroff had a horror of unmarried women, and never had Deen known to pay any sort of attention to one, not even to his sister's guest, Fuschia Leach the irresistible. Prince Zouroff was a tall large man of seven and thirty ; loosely built, and plain of feature. He had all the vices, and had them all in excess, but he was a very polished gentleman when he chose; and. he was one of the richest men in Europe, and his family, of 64 MOTEB. which he was the head, was very near the throne, In rank and influence; for twenty years, ever since he had left the imperial Corps de Pages, and shown himself in Paris, driving his team of black Orloffs, he had been the idolatry, the aspiration, and the despair of all the mothers of maidens. Vere's passage through his drawing-rooms on his arm was a spectacle so astonishing, that there was a general lull for a moment in the conversation of all his guests. It was a triumph, but Vere was wholly unconscious of it; which made her charming in the eyes of the giver of it. " I think that's a case!" said Miss Fuschia Leach to her admirers. She did not care herself. She did not want Zouroff, high, and mighty, and rich, and of great fashion though he was; she meant to die an English duchess, and she had only thrown over- the unhappy Mull because she had found out he was poor. " And what's the use of being a duchess, if you don't make a splash ? " she said very sensibly to his mother, when they talked it over. She had flirted with Mull shamelessly, but so she did with scores of them; it was her way. She had brought the way from America. She had young men about her as naturally as a rat-catcher has ferrets and terriers; but she meant to take her time before choosing one of them for good and all. " What a beautiful child she is," thought Prince Zouroff, " and so indifferent! Can she possibly be naughty Dolly's daughter ? " He was interested, and he, being skilled in such ways, easily learned the little there was to know about her, whilst he took her through his conservatories, and showed her Japan lilies, Chinese blossoms that changed colour thrice a day, and orchids of all climes and colours. The conservatories were really rare, and pleased her; but Prince Zouroff did not. His eyes were bold and cold, at once; they were red too, and there was an odour of brandy on his breath that came to her through all the scent of the flowers. She did not like him. She was grave and silent. She answered what he asked, but she did not care to stay there, and looked round for a chance of escape. It charmed Zouroff, who was so used to see women throw themselves in his path that he found no pleasure in their pursuit. " Decidedly she has been not at all with naughty Dolly 1" he said to himself, and looked at her with so much undisguised admiration in his gaze, that Yere, looking up from the golden blossoms of an Odontoglossum, blushed to the eyes, and felt angry, she could not very well have told why. "Your flowers are magnificent, and I thank you, monsieur; but I am tired, and I will say good night," she said quickly, with a little haughtiness of accent and glance which pleased Zouroff more than anything had done for years. MOTES. 65 "I would not detain you unwillingly, mademoiselle, one moment," he said, with a low bow—a bow which had some real respect in it. " Pardon me, this is your nearest way. I will say to miladi that you were tired. To-morrow, if there be anything you wish, only tell me, it shall be yours." He opened a door that led out of the last conservatory on to the foot of the great staircase; and Yere, not knowing whether she were not breaking all the rules of politeness and etiquette, bent her head to him and darted like a swallow up the stairs. Sergius Zouroff smiled, and strolled back alone through his drawing-rooms, and went up to Lady Dolly, and cast himself into a long, low chair by her side. " Ma chere, your lovely daughter did not appreciate my flowers or myself. She told me to tell you she was tired, and has gone to her room. She is beautiful, very beautiful; but I cannot say that she is complimentary." "She is only a child," said Lady Dolly hurriedly; she was half relieved, half frightened. " She is rude! " she added regret- fully. " It is the way she has been brought up. You must forgive her, she is so young." "" Forgive her! Mais de bon cceurl Anything feminine that runs away is only too delightful in these times," said the Prince coolly. " Do not change her. Do not tease her. Do not try to make her like yourself. I prefer her as she is." Lady Dolly looked at him quickly. Was it possible that already ? Sergius Zouroff was lying back in his chair with his eyes closed. He was laughing a little silently, in an unpleasant way that he had; he had spoken insolently, and Lady Dolly could not resent his insolence. " You are very kind, Prince," she said as negligently as she could behind her fan. " Very kind, to treat a child's boutades as a girl's charm. She has really seen nothing, you know, shut up in that old northern house by the sea; and she is as eccentric as if she were eighty years old. Quite odd in her notions, quite! " " Shall we play ? " said Zouroff. They began to play, most of them, at a little roulette table. Musicians were interpreting, divinely, themes of Beethoven's and Schumann's; the great glass halls and marble courts of the flowers were open with all their array of bloom; the green gardens and gay terraces were without in the brilliancy of moonlight; the sea was not a score of yards away, sparkling with phosphorus and star-rays; but they were indifferent to all these things. They began to play, and heeded nothing else. The music sounded on deaf ears; the flowers breathed out odours on closed nostrils; the summer night spread its loveliness in vain; and the waters of salt wave and fresh fountain murmured on unheeded. Play held them. F 08 MOTHS. Sergius Zouroff lost plenty of money to Lady Dolly, who went to bed at two o'clock, worried and yet pleased, anxious and yet exultant. Yere's room was placed next to hers. She looked in before passing on to her own. The girl lay sound asleep in the sweet dreamless sleep of her lingering childhood, her hair scattered like gold on the pillows, her limbs in the lovely grace of a serene and unconscious repose. Lady Dolly looked at her as she slept, and an uneasy pang shot through her. "If he do mean that," she thought, "I suppose it would be horrible. And how much too pretty and too innocent she would be for him—the beast!" Then she turned away, and went to her own chamber, and began the toilsome martyrdom of having her perruque unfastened, and her night's preparations for the morning's enamel begun. To women like Lady Dolly life is a comedy, no doubt, played on great stages and to brilliant audiences, and very amusing and charming, and all that; but alas! it has two dread passages in each short twenty-four hours; they are, the bore of being " done up," and the bore of being " undone 1" It is a martyrdom,'.but they bear it heroically, knowing that without it they would be nowhere; would be yellow, pallid, wrinkled, even perhaps would be flirtationless, unenvied, unre- garded, worse than dead ! If Lady Dolly had said any prayers she would have said, " Thank God for Piver 1" CHAPTER VH It was a very pretty life at Felicite. The riding parties meeting under the old avenue of Spanish chestnuts and dispersing down the flowering lanes; the shooting parties, which were not serious and engrossing as in England, but animated and picturesque in the deep old Norman woods ; the stately dinner at nine o'clock every night, like a royal banquet; the music which was so worthy of more attentive hearers than it ever got; the theatre, pretty and pimpant as a coquette of the last century; the laughter; the brilliancy; the personal beauty of the women assembled there ; all made the life at Felicite charming to the eye and the ear. Yet amidst it all Vere felt very lonely, and the only friends she made were in the Irish horse that they gave her to ride, and in the big Russian hound that belonged to Prince Zouroff. The men thought her lovely, but they could not get on with MOTEB. 61 her; the women disliked her as much as they adored, or professed to adore, Fuschia Leach. To Yere, who at Bulmer had been accustomed to see life held a serious, and even solemn thing—who had been accustomed to the gravity of age and the melancholy of a seafaring poor, and the'northern tillers of a thankless soil—nothing seemed so wonder- ful as the perpetual gaiety and levity around her. Was there any sorrow in the world? Was life only one long laugh? Was it right to forget the woes of others as utterly as they were for- gotten here? She was always wondering, and there was no one to ask. " You are horribly in earnest, Yere," said her mother pettishly. " You should go and live with Mr. Gladstone." But to Yere it seemed more horrible to be always laughing— and laughing at nothing. "When there are all the poor," she thought, " and all the animals that suffer so." She did not under- stand that, when these pretty women had sold china and flowers at a fancy fair for a hospital, or subscribed to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty, they had really done all that they thought was required of them, and could dismiss all human and animal pain from their minds, and bring their riding-horses home saddle-galled and spur-torn without any compunction To the complete innoc<»- and honesty of the girl's nature the discovery wh ' store the world set on all things which she had been taught to hold sacred, left a sickening sense of solitude and depression behind it. Those who are little children now will have little left to learn when they reach womanhood. The little children that are about us at afternoon tea and at lawn tennis, that are petted by house-parties and romped with at pigeon-shooting, will have little left to discover. They are miniature women already; they know the meaning of many a dubious phrase; they know the relative value of social positions; they know much of the science of flirtation which society has substituted for passion ; they understand very thoroughly the shades of intimacy, the suggestions of a smile, the degrees of hot and cold, that may be marked by a bow or emphasised with a good-day. All the subtle science of society is learned by them instinctively and unconsciously, as they learn French and German from their maids. When they are women they will at least never have Eve's excuse for sin; they will know everything that any tempter could tell them. Perhaps their knowledge may prove their safeguard, perhaps net; perhaps without its bloom the fruit to men's taste may seem prematurely withered. Another ten years will tell. At any rate those we pet to-day will be spared the pang of disillusion when they shall be fairly out in a world that they already know with cynical thorough- ness—baby La Bruyeres and girl-Bochefoucaulds in frills and sashes. To Yere Herbert, on the contrary, reared as she had been upon grave studies and in country loneliness, the shocks her faiths and 58 MOTE8. her fancies received was very cruel. Sometimes she thought bitterly she would have minded nothing if only her mother had been a thing she could have reverenced, a creature she could have gone to for support and sympathy. But her mother was the most frivolous of the whole sea of froth around her—of the whole frivolous womanhood about her the very emptiest bubble. Yere, who herself had been cast by nature in the mould to be a noble mother of children, had antique sacred fancies that went with the name of mother. The mother of the Gracchi, the mother of Bonaparte, the mother of Garibaldi, the many noble maternal figures of history and romance, were for ever in her thoughts; th« time-honoured word embodied to her all sacrifice, all nobility, all holiness. And her mother was this pretty foolish painted toy, with false curls in a sunny circlet, above her kohl-washed eyes, with her heart set on a cotillon, and her name in the mouths of the clubs; whose god was her tailor, and whose gospel was Zola; whose life was an opera-bouffe, and who when she costumed for her part in it, took " le moindre excuse pour paraitre nue! " The thought of her mother, thus, hurt her, as in revolutions it hurts those who believe in Mary to see a Madonna spat upon by a mob. Lady Stoat saw this, and tried, in her fashion, to console her for it. " My dear, your mother is young still. She must divert herself. It would be very hard on her not to be allowed. You must not think she is not fond of you because she still likes to waltz." Vere's eyes were very sombre as she heard. " I do not like to waltz. I never do." "No, love? Well, temperaments differ. But'surely you wouldn't be so cruel as to condemn your mother only to have your inclinations, would you ? Dolly was always full of fun. I think you have not fun enough in you, perhaps." " But my father is dead." " My dear, Queen Anne is dead! Henri Quatre est sur le Pont-Neuf. What other news will you tell us ? I am not saying, dear, that you should think less of your father's memory. It is too sweet of you to feel so much, and very, very rare, alas! for nowadays our children are so forgetful, and we are so little to them. But still you know your mamma is young, and so pretty as she is, too, no one can expect her to shut herself up as a recluse. Perhaps, had you been always with her, things would have been different, but she has always been so much admired and so petted by every one that it was only natural—only natural that " " She should not want me," said Vere, as Lady Stoat paused for a word that should adequately express Lady Dolly's excuses whilst preserving Lady Dolly's dignity before her daughter. " Oh, my dear, I never meant that," she said hastily, wnBst thinking, " Quel enfant terrible!" M0TH8. 69 The brilliant Fusohia was inclined to be very amiable and cordial to the young daughter of Lady Dorothy Yanderdecken, but Vere repelled her overtures with a chilling courtesy that made the bright American " feel foolish." But Pick-me-up, as she was usually called in the great world, was not a person to be deterred by one slight, or by fifty. To never risk a rebuff is a golden rule for self-respect; but it is not the rule by which new people achieve success. Fuschia Leach was delighted with her social success, but she never deceived herself about it. In America her people were " new people "—that is to say, her father had made his pile selling cigars and drugs in a wild country, and her brothers were making a bigger pile killing pigs on a gigantic scale down west. In New York she and hers were deemed " shoddy "—the very shoddiest of shoddy—and were looked coldly on, and were left unvisited. But boldly springing over to less sensitive Europe, they found themselves without effort received at courts and in embassies, and had become fashionable people almost as soon as they had had time to buy high-stepping horses and ask great tailors to clothe them. It seemed very funny; it seemed quite unaccountable, and it bewildered them a little; but Fuschia Leach did not lose her head. " I surmise I'd best eat the curds while they're sweet," she said to herself, and she did eat them. She dressed, she danced, she made all her young men fetch and carry for her, she flirted, she caught up the ways and words and habits and graces of the great world, and adapted herself to her new sphere with versatile clever- ness, but all the same she " prospected " with a keen eye all the land that lay around her, and never deceived herself. "I look cunning, and I'm spry, and I cheek him, and say outrageous things, and he likes it, and so they all go mad on me after him," she said to herself; meaning by her pronoun the great personage who had first made her the fashion. But she knew very well that whenever anything prettier, odder, or more " outrageous " than herself should appear she would lose her prestige in a day, and fall back into the ranks of the ten thousand American girls who overrun Europe. " I like you," she said to Yere unasked one day, when she found her alone on the lawn. "You are very good," said Yere, with the coldness of an empress of sixty years old. " I like you," reiterated Miss Leach. " I like you because you treat 'em like dirt under your feet. That's our way; but these Europeans go after men as the squir'ls jump after cobs. You ars the only one I have seen that don't." "You are very amiable to praise me," said Yere coldly. The lovely Fuschia continued her reflections aloud. " We're just as bad when the Englishmen go over to us; that's TO M0TE8, a fact. But with our own men we ain't; we just make shoeblacks and scallyrags of them; they fetch and carry, and do as they're told. What a sharp woman your mother is, and as lively as a katydid ! Now on our side, you know, the old folks never get at pUy like that; they've given over." " My mother is young," said Yere, more coldly still. Miss Leach tilted her chair on end. " That's just what's so queer. They are young on into any age over here. Your mother's over thirty, I suppose ? Don't you call that old ? It's Methuselah with us. But here your grandmothers look as cunning as can be, and they're as skittish as spring-lambs; it's the climate, I surmise ? " Yere did not reply, and Miss Fuschia Leach, undaunted, con- tinued her meditations aloud. " You haven't had many affairs, I think ? You're not really out, are you ? " " No—affairs ? " " Heart affairs, you know. Dear me! why before I was your age, I was engaged to James Fluke Dyson, down Boston way." " Are you to marry him, then ? " "Mef No—thanks! I never meant to marry him. He did to go about with, and it made Victoria Boker right mad. Then mother came to Europe: he and 1 vowed constancy and exchanged rings and hair and all that, and we did write to each other each mail, till I got to Paris; then I got more slack, and I disremem- bered to ask when the mails went out; soon after we heard he had burst up; wasn't it a piece of luck ? " " I do not understand." " Piece of luck we came to Europe. I might have taken him over there. He was a fine young man, only he hadn't the way your men have; not their cheek either. His father'd always been thought one of the biggest note-shavers in N'York City. They say it was the fall in silver broke him; any way, poor James he's a clerk in a tea-store now." Vere looked at her in speechless surprise; Pick-me-up laughed all the more. " Oh, they are always at seesaw like that in our country. He'll make another pile, I dare say, by next year, and they'll all get on their legs again. Your people, when they are bowled over lie down ; ours jump up; I surmise it's the climate. I like your men best, though ; they look such swells, even when they're in blanket coats and battered old hats, such as your cousin Mull wears." "Is it true that Frank wished to succeed Mr. James Fluke Dyson ? " Yere asked after a sore struggle with her disgust. " Who's Frank ? " " My cousin, Mull." " Is he Frank ? Dear life! I always thought dukes were dukes, even in the bosom of their families. Yes; he was that soft M0TE8. 71 on me—there, they all are, but he's the worst I ever saw. I said no, but I could whistle him back. I'm most sorry I did say no. Dukes don't grow on every apple-bough; only he's poor, they say " "He is poor," said Yere coldly, her disgust conquering all amusement. " When I came across the Pond," said Miss Leach, continuing her own reflections, "I said to mother 'I'll take nothing but a duke.' I always had a kind o' fancy for a duke. There's such a few of them. I saw an old print once in the Broadway, of a Duchess of Northumberland, holding her coronet out in both hands. I said to myself then, that was how I'd be taken someday—— " " Do you think duchesses hold their coronets in their hands, then?" " Well, no; I see they don't; but I suppose oiy would in a picture ? " " I think it would look very odd, even in a picture." "What's the use of having one, then? There aren't corona- tions every day. They tell me your cousin might be rolling if he liked. Is it true he'd h ive five hundred pounds sterling a day if he bored for coal ? One jould live on that." " He would never permit the forest to be touched to save his life!" said Yere indigrantly, with a frown and a flush. "The forests are as old as the days of Hengist and Horsa ; the wild bulls are in them and the red deer ; men crept there to die after Otter- bourne; under one of the oaks, King James saw Johnie Arm- strong." Fuschla Leach showed all her pretty teeth. " Yery touchin', but the coal was under them before that, I guess! That's much more to the point. I come from a business-country. If he'll heai reason about that coal, I'm not sure I won't think twice about your cousin." Vere, without ceremony, turned away. She felt angry tears swell her throat and rise into her eyes. " Oh, you turn up your nose!" said Fuschia Leach vivaciously. " You think it atrocious that new folks should carry off your brothers, and cousins, and friends. Well, I'd like to know where'a it worse than all your big nobility going down at our feet for oui dollars ? I don't say your English do it so much, but they do do it, your younger sons, and all that small fry; and abroad we can buy the biggest and best titles in all Europe for a few hundred thousand dollars a year. That's real mean ! That's blacking boots, if you please. Men with a whole row of crusaders at their backs, men as count their forefathers right away into Julius Caesar's times, men that had uncles in the Ark with Noah, they're at a Yankee pile like flies around molasses. Wal, now," said the pretty Ameri- can, with her eyes lighting fiercely and with sparks of scorn flash- ing out from them, " Wal, now, you're all of you that proud that 72 M0TE8. you beat Lucifer, but as far as I see there aren't much to be proud of. We're shoddy over there. If we went to Boston we wouldn't get a drink, outside an hotel, for our lives. N'York, neither, don't think because a man's struck ile he'll go to heaven with Paris thrown in; but look at all your big folk! Pray what do they do the minute shoddy comes their way over the pickle-field ? Why they just eat it! Kiss it and eat it! Do you guess we're such fools we don't see that ? Why your Norman blood and Domesday Book and all the rest of it—pray hasn't it married Lily Peart, whose father kept the steamboat hotel in Jersey City, and made his pile selling soothers to the heathen Chinee? Who was your Mar- chioness of Snowdon if she weren't the daughter of old Sam Salmon the note-shaver? Who was your Duchesse de Dagobert, if she weren't Aurelia Twine, with seventy million dollars made in two years out of oil? Who was your Princess Buondelmare, if not Lotty Miller, who was born in Nevada, and baptized with gin in a miner's pannikin ? We know 'em all! And Blue Blood's taken 'em because they had cash. That's about it! Wal, to my fancy, there aren't much to be proud of anyhow, and it aren't only us that need be laughed at." " It is not," said Yere, who had listened in bewilderment. " There is very much to be ashamed of on both sides." "Shame's a big thing—a four-horse concern," said the other with some demur. " But if any child need be ashamed it is not this child. There's a woman in Rome, Anastasia W. Crash; her father's a coloured person. After the war he turned note-shaver and made a pile; Anastasia aren't coloured to signify; she looks like a Creole, and she's handsome. It got wind in Rome that she was going there, and had six million dollars a year safe; and she has that; it's no lie. Well, in a week she could pick and choose amongst the Roman princes as if they were bilberries in a hedge, and she's taken one that's got a name a thousand years old; a name that every school-girl reads out in her history-books when she reads about the popes! There! And Anastasia W. Crash is a coloured person with us; with us we would not go in the same car with her, nor eat at the same table with her. What do you think of that ? " " I think your country is very liberal; and that your ' coloured person' has revenged all the crimes of the Borgias." . The pretty American looked at her suspiciously. " I guess I don't understand you," she said a little sulkily. " 1 guess you're very deep, aren't you ? " " Pardon me," said Yere, weary of the conversation; " if you will excuse me I will leave you now, we are going to ride " " Ride ? Ah ! That's a thing I don't cotton to anyhow," said Miss Fuschia Leach, who had found that her talent did not lie that way, and could never bring herself to comprehend how princesses and duchesses could find any pleasure in tearing over bleak fields MOTHS. 73 and jumping scratching hedges. A calorifere at eighty degrees always, a sacque from Sirandin's, an easy chair, and a dozen young men in various stages of admiration around her, that was her idea of comfort. Everything out of doors made her chilly. She watched Yere pass away, and laughed, and yet felt sorry. She herself was the rage because she was a great beauty and a great flirt; because she had been signalled for honour by a prince whose word was law; because she was made for the age she lived in, with a vulgarity that was chic, and an audacity that was unrivalled, and a delightful mingling of utter ignorance and intense shrewd- ness, of slavish submission to fashion and daring eccentricity in expression, that made her to the jaded palate of the world a social caviare, a moral absinthe. Exquisitely pretty, perfectly dressed, as dainty to look at as porcelain, and as common to talk to as a camp follower, she, like many of her nation, had found herself, to her own surprise, an object of adoration to that great world of which she had known nothing, except from the imaginative columns of " own correspondents." But Fuschia Leach was no fool, as she said often herself, and she felt, as her eyes followed Vere, that this calm cold child, with her great contemptuous eyes and her tranquil voice, had something she had not; something that not all the art of Mr. Worth could send with his confections to herself. " My word! I think I'll take Mull just to rile her! " she thought to herself; and thought, too, for she was good-natured and less vain than she looked: " Perhaps she'd like me a little bit then—and then, again, perhaps she wouldn't." " That girl's worth five hundred of me, and yet they don't see it! " she mused now, as she pursued Vere's shadow with her eyes across the lawn. She knew very well that with some combination of scarlet and orange, or sage and maize upon her, in some miracle of velvet and silk, with a cigarette in her mouth, a thousand little curls on her forehead, the last slang on her lips, and the last news on her ear, her own generation would find her adorable while it would leave Yere Herbert in the shade. And yet she would sooner have been Yere Herbert; yet she would sooner have had that subtle, nameless, unattainable " something " which no combination of scarlet and orange, of sage and of maize, was able to give, no imitation or effort for half a lifetime would teach. "We don't raise that sort somehow our way," she reflected wistfully. She let the riding party go out with a sigh of envy—the slender figure of Vere foremost on a mare that few cared to mount—and went herself to drive in a little basket-carriage with the Princess Nelaguine, accompanied by an escort of her own more intimate adorers, to call at two or three of the maisonettes scattered along the line of the shore between Felicite and Villers. " Strikes me I'll have to take that duke after all," she thought to herself; he would come to her sign, she knew, as a hawk to the lure 74 M0TH8. That day Prince Zouroff rode by Vere's side, and paid her many compliments on her riding and other things; but she scarcely heard them. She knew she could ride anything, as she told him ; and she thought every one could who loved horses ; and then she barely heard the rest of his pretty speeches. She was thinking, with a bewildered disgust, of the woman whom Francis Herbert. Duke of Mull and Cantire, was willing to make her cousin. She had not comprehended one tithe of Pick-me-up's jargc but she had understood the menace to the grand, old, sombre bord. forests about Castle Herbert, which she loved with a love only secon to that she felt for the moors and woods of Bulmer. "I would sooner see Francis dead than see him touch those trees!" she thought, with what her mother called her terrible earnestness. And she was so absorbed in thinking of the shame of such a wife for a Herbert of Mull, that she never noticed the glances Zouroff gave her, or dreamed that the ladies who^ode with her were saying to each other, a" Is it possible ? Can he be serious ? " Yere had been accustomed to rise at six and go to bed at ten, to spend her time in serious studies or open-air exercise. She was be- wildered by a day which began at one or two o'clock in the afternoon, and ended at cockcrow or later. She was harassed by the sense of being perpetually exhibited and unceasingly criticised. Speak- ing little herself, she listened, and observed, and began to understand all that Correze had vaguely warned her against; to see the rancour underlying the honeyed words ; the enmity concealed by the cordial smile; the hate expressed in praise ; the effort masked in ease ; the endless strife and calumny, and cruelty, and small conspiracies which make up the daily life of men and women in society. Most of it was still a mystery to her; but much she saw, and grew heartsick at it. Light and vain temperaments find their congenial atmosphere in the world of fashion, but hers was neither light nor vain, and the falseness of it all oppressed her. " You are a little Puritan, my dear! " said Lady Stoat, smiling at her. " Pray be anything else rather that that!" said Lady Dolly pettishly. " Everybody hates it. It makes you look priggish and conceited, and nobody believes in it even. That ever a child of mine should have such ideas!" " Yes. It is very funny! " said her dear Adine quietly. " You neglected her education, pussy. She is certainly a little Puritan. But we should not laugh at her. In these days it is really very interesting to see a girl who can blush, and who does not understand the French of the Petits Journaux, though she knows the French of Marmontel and of Massillon." " Who cares for Marmontel and Massillon ? " said Lady Dolly in disgust. She was flattered by the success of Yere as a beauty, and irri- MO TBS. 75 tated by her failure as a companionable creature. She was triumphant to see the impression made by the girl's blending of sculptural calm and childlike loveliness. She was infuriated a hundred times a day by Vere's obduracy, coldness, and unwise directness of speech. "It is almost imbecility," thought Lady Dolly, obliged to apologise continually for some misplaced sincerity or obtuse neg- ligence with which her daughter had offended people. " You should never froisser other people; never, never! " said Lady Dolly. " If Nero, and what-was-her-name that began with an M, were to come in your world, you should be civil to them; you should be charming to them, so long as they were people that were received. Nobody is to judge for themselves, never. If society is with you, then you are all right. Besides, it looks so much prettier to be nice and charitable and all that; and besides, what do you know, you chit ? " Yere was always silent under these instructions ; they were but little understood by her. When she did froisser people it was generally because their consciences gave a sting to her simple frank words of which the young speaker herself was quite unconscious. " Am I a Puritan ?" Yere thought, with anxious self-examin- ation. In history she detested the Puritans; all her sympathies were with the other side. Yet she began now to think that, if the Stuart court ever resembled Felicite, the Puritans had not perhaps been so very far wrong. Felicite was nothing more or worse than a very fashionable house of the period; but it was the world in little, and it hurt her, bewildered her, and in many ways disgusted her. If she had been stupid, as her mother thought her, she would have been amused or indifferent; but she was not stupid, and she was oppressed and saddened. At Bulmer she had been reared to think truth the first law of life, modesty as natural to a gentle- woman as cleanliness, delicacy and reserve the attributes of all good breeding, and sincerity indispensable to self-respect. At Felicite, who seemed to care for any one of these things ? Lady Stoat gave them lip-service indeed, but, with that excep- tion, no* one took the trouble even to render them that questionable homage which hypocrisy pays to virtue. In a world that was the really great world, so far as fashion went and rank (for the house-party at Felicite was composed of people of the purest blood and highest station, people very ex- elusive, very prominent and very illustrious), Vere found things that seemed passing straDge to her. When she heard of pro- fessional beauties, whose portraits were sold for a shilling, and whose names were as cheap as red herrings, yet who were received at court and envied by princesses; when 6he saw that men were the wooed, not the wooers, and that the art of flirtation was reduced to a tournament of effrontery; when she saw a great 76 MOTES. duchess go out with the guns, carrying her own chokebore by Purdy and showing her slender limbs in gaiters; when she saw married women not much older than herself spending hour after hour in the fever of chemin-de-fer ; when she learned that they were very greedy for their winnings to be paid, but never dreamt of being asked to pay their losses; when she saw these women with babies in their nurseries, making unblushing love to other women's husbands, and saw every one looking on the pastime as a matter of course quite good-naturedly; when she saw one of these ladies take a flea from her person and cry, Qui m'aime I'avale, and a prince of semi-royal blood swallow the flea in a glass of water, when to these things, and a hundred others like them, the young student from the Northumbrian moors was the silent and amazed listener and spectator, she felt indeed lost in a strange and terrible world; and something that was very like disgust shone from her clear eyes and closed her proud mouth. Society as it was filled her with a very weariness of disgust, a cold and dreary disenchantment, like the track of grey mire that in the mountains is left by the descent of the glacier. But her mother was more terrible to her than all. At the thought of her mother Yere, even in solitude, felt her cheek burn with an intolerable shame. When she came to know something of the meaning of those friendships that society condones—of those jests which society whispers between a cup of tea and a cigarette—of those hints which are enjoyed like a bonbon, yet contain all the enormities that appalled Juvenal,—then the heart of Yere grew sick, and she began slowly to realise what manner of woman this was that had given her birth. " My dear, your pretty daughter seems to sit in judgment on us all! I am sadly afraid she finds us wanting," said the great lady who had signalised herself with utilising a flea. " Oh, she has a dreadful look, I know," said Lady Dolly dis- tractedly. "But you see she has been always with that odious old woman. She has seen nothing. She is a baby." The other smiled. *' When she has been married a year, all that will change. She will leave it behind her with her maiden sashes and shoes. But I am not sure that she will marry quickly, lovely as she is. She frightens people, and, if you don't mind my saying so, she is rude. The other night when we had that little bit of fun about the flea she rose and walked away, turned her back positively, as if she were a scandalised dowager. Now, you know, that doesn't do nowadays. The age of saints is gone by " "If there ever were one," said Lady Dolly, who occasionally forgot that she was very high church in her doctrines. " Vera would make a beautiful St. Ursula," said Lady Stoat, joining them.| " There is war as well as patience in her count©- nance; she will resist actively as well as endure passively." MOTES. 77 " What a dreadful thing to say !" sighed Lady Dolly. The heroine of the flea erotic laughed at her. " Marry her, my dear. That is what she wants." She herself was only one and twenty, and had been married four years, had some little flaxen bundles in nurses' arms that she seldom saw, was deeply in debt, had as many adorers as she had pearls and diamonds, and was a very popular and admired per- sonage. " Why can't you get on with people ?" Lady Dolly said to Vere irritably, that day. " I do not think they like me," said Yere very humbly; and her mother answered very sharply and sensibly— "Everybody is liked as much as they wish to be. If you show people you like them, they like you. It is perfectly simple. You get what you give, my dear, in this world. But the sad truth is, Yere, that you are unamiable." Was she in truth unamiable? She felt the tears gather in her eyes. She put her hand on the hound Loris's collar, and went away with him into the gardens; the exquisite gardens with the gleam of the sea between the festoons of their roses that no one hardly ever noticed except herself. In a deserted spot where a marble Antinous reigned over a world of bigonias, she sat down on a rustic chair and put her arm round the dog's neck, and cried like the child that she was. She thought of the sweetbriar bush on the edge of the white cliff—oh! if only Correze had been here to tell her what to do! The dog kissed her in his own way, and was sorrowful for her sorrow; the sea wind stirred the flowers; the waves were near enough at hand for their murmuring to reach her; the quietness and sweetness of the place soothed her. She would surely see Correze again, she thought; perhaps in Paris, this very winter, if her mother took her there. He would tell her if she were right or wrong in having no sympathy with all these people ; and the tears still fell down her cheeks as she sat there and fancied she heard that wondrous voice rise once more above the sound of the sea. " Mademoiselle Yera, are you unhappy ? and in Felicity!" said a voice that was very unlike that unforgotten music—the voice of Sergius Zouroff. Yere looked up startled, with her tears still wet, like dew. Zouroff had been kindness itself to her, but her first disgust for him had never changed. She was alarmed and vexed to be found by him, so, alone. " What frets you ? " he said, with more gentleness than often came into his tones. " It is a regret to me as your host that you should know any regret in Felicite. If there be anything I can do, command me." 78 MOTE8. " You are very good, monsieur," said Yere hesitatingly. " It is nothing—very little, at least; my mother is vexed with me." " Indeed ! Your charming mother, then, for once, must be in the wrong. What is it ? " " Because people do not like me." " Who is barbarian enough not to like you? I am a barbarian, but " His cold eyes grew eloquent, but she did not see their gaze, for she was looking dreamily at the far-off sea. "No one likes me," said Vere wearily, "and my mother thinks it is my fault. No doubt it is. I do not care for what they care for; but then they do not care for what I love—the gardens, the woods, the sea, the dogs." She drew Loris close as she spoke, and rose to go. She did not wish to be with her host. But Zouroflf paced by her side. " Loris pleases you ? Will you give him the happiness of being called yours ? " Vere for once raised a bright and grateful face to him, a flush of pleasure drying her tears. " Mine ? Loris ? Oh, that would be delightful!—if mamma will let me." " Your mother will let you," said Zourofif, with an odd smile. " Loris is a fortunate beast, to have power to win your fancy." " But I like all dogs—— " " And no men ? " " I do not think about them." It was the simple truth. " I wish I were a dog! " said Serge ZourofF. Yere laughed for a moment—a child's sudden laugh at a droll idea ; then her brows contracted a little. " Dogs do not flatter me," she said curtly. " Nor do I —foi (Thonneur ! But tell me, is it really the fact that cruel Lady Dolly made you weep ? In my house too!—I am very angry. I wish to make it Felicite to you, beyond any other of my guests." "Mamma was no doubt right, monsieur," said Vere coldly. " She said that I do not like people, and I do not." " Dameyou have very excellent taste, then," said Zouroff with a laugh. " I will not quarrel with your coldness, Made- moiselle Vera, if you will only make an exception for me ? " Vere was silent. ZourofFs eyes grew impatient and fiery. " Will you not even like me a little for Loris's sake ? " Vere stood still in the rose-path, and looked at him with serious serene eyes. " It was kind of you to give me Loris, that I know, and I am grateful for that; but I will not tell you what is false, monsieur; it would be a very bad return." MOTHS. 79 " Is she the wiliest coquette by instinct, or only the strangest child that ever breathed?" thought Zouroff as he said aloud, " Why do you not like me, mon enfant ? " Yere hesitated a moment. " I do not think you are a good man." " And why am I so unfortunate as to give you that opinion of me ? " " It is the way you talk; and you kicked Loris one day last week." Serge Zouroff laughed aloud, but he [swore a heavy oath under his breath. "Your name in Russian means Faith. You are well named, Mademoiselle Vera," he said carelessly, as he continued to walk by her side. " Rut I shall hope to make you think better things of me yet, and 1 can never kick Loris again, as he is now yours, with- out your permission." "You will never have that," said Yere, with a little smile, as she thought, with a pang of compunction, that she had been very rude to a host who was courteous and generous. Zouroff moved on beside her, gloomy and silent. " Take my arm, mademoiselle," he said suddenly, as they were approaching the chateau. Vere put her hand on his arm in timid compliance ; she felt that she must have seemed rude and thankless. They crossed the smooth lawns that stretched underneath the terraces of Felicite. It was near sunset, about seven o'clock; some ladies were out on the terrace, amidst them Lady Dolly and the heroine of the flea. They saw Zouroff cross the turf, with the girl in her white Gainsborough dress beside him, and the hound beside her. Lady Dolly's heart gave a sudden leap, then stopped its beats in suspense. " Positively—I do—think " murmured the lady of the flea and then fell back in her chair in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Yere loosened her hand from her host's arm as they ascended the terrace steps, and came straight to her mother. " Monsieur Zouroff has given me Loris ! " she cried breathlessly, for the dog was to her an exceeding joy. " You will let me have Loris, mamma ? " " Let her have Loris," said Zouroff, with a smile that Lady Dolly understood. " Certainly, since you are so kind, Prince," she said charmingly. "But a dog! It is such a disagreeable thing; when one travels especially. Still, since you are so good to that naughty child, who gives all her heart to the brutes " " I am happy that she thinks me a brute too," said Zouroff, with a grim smile. The ladies laughed. Yere did not hear or heed. She was caressing her new treasure. 80 MOTE8. " I shall not feel alone now with Loris," she was saying to herself. The dull fierce eyes of Serge Zouroff were fastened on her, but she did not think of him, nor of why the women laughed. Lady Dolly was vaguely perplexed. " The girl was crying half an hour ago," she thought. "Perhaps she is deeper than one thinks. Perhaps she means to draw him on that way. Anyhow, her way appears to answer—but it hardl seems possible—when one thinks what he has had thrown at h head and never looked atl And Vere! such a Tude creature, an such a simpleton 1" Yet a sullen respect began to enter into her for her daughter the respect that women of the world only give to a shrewd talent for finesse. If she were capable at sixteen of " drawing on" the master of Felicite thus ably, Lady Dolly felt that her daughter might yet prove worthy of her; might still become a being with whom she could have sympathy and community of sentiment. And yet Lady Dolly felt a sort of sickness steal over her as she saw the look in his eyes which Yere did not see. " It will be horrible! horrible!" she said to herself. " Why did Adine ever tell me to come here ? " For Lady Dolly was never in her own eyes the victim of her own follies, but always that of some one else's bad counsels. Lady Dolly was frightened when she thought that it was pos- sible that this scorner of unmarried women would be won by her own child. But she was yet more terrified when the probable hope- lessness of any such project flashed on her. The gift of the dog might mean everything, and might mean nothing. " What a constant misery she is!" she mused. " Oh, why wasn't she a boy ? They go to Eton, and if they get into trouble men manage it all; and they are useful to go about with if you want stalls at a theatre, or an escort that don't compromise you.. But a daughter! . . . ." She could have cried, dressed though she was for dinner, in a combination of orange and deadleaf, that would have consoled any woman under any affliction. " Do you think he means it ? " she whispered to Lady Stoat, who inswered cautiously— " I think he might be made to mean it." ^ady Dolly sighed, and looked nervous. Two days later Loris had a silver collar on his neck that had just come from Paris. It had the inscription on it of the Trouba- dour's motto for his mistress's falcon : " Quiconque me trouvera, quHl me mene a ma maitresse: pour recompense it la verra." Vere looked doubtfully at the collar; she preferred Loris with- out it. " He does mean it," said Lady Dolly to herself, and her pulses fluttered strangely. MOTHS. 81 " I'd have given you a dog if I'd known you wished for one,*1 said John Jura moodily that evening to Yere. She smiled and thanked him. " I had so many dogs about me at Bulmer I feel lost without one, and Loris is very beautiful " Jura looked at her with close scrutiny. " How do you like the giver of Loris ? " Yere met his gaze unmoved. " I do not like him at all," she said in a low tone. "But perhaps it is not sincere to say so. He is very kind, and we are in his house." " My dear! That we are in his house or that he is in ours is the very reason to abuse a man like a thief! You don't seem to understand modern ethics," said the heroine of the flea epic, as she passed near with a little laugh, on her way to play cheminrde-fer in the next drawing-room. " Don't listen to them," said Jura hastily. " They will do you no good; they are all a bad lot here." "But they are all gentle-people?" said Yere in some astonish- ment. " They are all gentlemen and gentlewomen born." "Oh, lorn!" said Jura, with immeasurable contempt. "Oh yes! they're all in the swim for that matter; but they are about as bad a set as there is in Europe; not but what it is much the same everywhere. They say the Second Empire did it. I don't know if it's that, but I do know that' gentlewomen,' as you call it, are things one never sees nowadays anywhere in Paris or London. You have got the old grace, but how long will you keep it ? They will corrupt you ; and if they can't, they'll ruin you." " Is it so easy to be corrupted or to be ruined ? " " Easy as blacking your glove," said Jura moodily. Vete gave a little sigh. Life seemed to her very difficult. " I do not think they will change me," she said, after a few moments' thought. " I don't think they will; but they will make you pay for it. If they say nothing worse of you than that you are ' odd,' you will be lucky. How did you become what you were? You, Dolly's daughter!" Yere coloured at the unconscious contempt with which he spoke the two last words. " I try to be what my father would have wished," she said under her breath. Jura was touched. His blue eyes grew dim and reverential. " I wish to heaven your father may watch over you ! " he said In a husky voice. " In our world, my dear, you will want some good angel—bitterly. Perhaps you will be your own, though. I hope so." His hand sought hers and caught it closely for an instant, and he grew very pale. Yere looked up in a little surprise. a 62 MOTES. " You are very kind to think of me," she said with a certain emotion. " Who would not think of you ? " muttered Jura, with a dark- ness on his frank, fair, bold face. " Don't be so astonished that 1 do," he said, with a little laugh, whose irony she did not under- stand. " You know I am such a friend of your mother's." " Yes," said Yere gravely. She was perplexed. Ho took up her fan and unfurled it. " Who gave you this thing ? It is an old one of Dolly's, I bought it in the Passage Choiseul myself; it's not half good enough for you now. I bought one at Christie's last winter, that belonged to Maria Theresa; it has her monogram in opals; it was painted by Fragonard, or one of those beggars ; I will send for it for you if you will please me by taking it." " You are very kind," said Vere. " That is what you say of Serge Zouroff I" She laughed a little. " I like you better than Monsieur Zouroff." Jura's face flushed to the roots of his fair crisp curls. " And as well as your favoured singer ? " " Ah, no !"—Vere spoke quickly, and with a frown on her pretty brows. She was annoyed at the mention of Correze. Lady Dolly approached at that moment—an apparition of white lace and nenuphars, with some wonderful old cameos as ornaments. " Take me to the tea-room, Jack," she said sharply. " Clemen- tine de Vrille is winning everything again; it is sickening; I believe she marks the aces!" Jura gave her his arm. Vere, left alone, sat lost in thought. It was a strange world. No one seemed happy in it, or sincere. Lord Jura, whom her mother treated like a brother, seemed to despise her more than any one; and her mother seemed to say that another friend, who was a French duchess, descended from a Valois, was guilty of cheating at cards I Jura took the white lace and nenuphars into the tea-room. He was silent and preoccupied. Lady Dolly wanted pretty attentions, but their day was over with him. " Is it true," he said abruptly to her, " that Zouroff wants your daughter ? " Lady Dolly smiled vaguely. " Oh! I don't know; they say many things, you know. No ;• I shouldn't suppose he means anything, should you ? " " I can't say," he answered curtly. " You wish it." " Of course I wish anything for her happiness." He laughed aloud. " What damned hypocrites all you women are!" "My dear Jura,prayl you are not in a guard-room or a club- room I" said Lady Dolly very seriously shocked indeed. MOTHS. 83 Lord Jura got ho* off his hands at length, and bestowed her on a young dandy, who had become famous by winning the Grand Prix in that summer. Then he walked away by himself into the smoking-room, which at that hour was quite deserted. He threw himself down on one of the couches, and thought—moodily, im- patiently, bitterly. " What cursed fools we are!" he mused. What a fool he had been ever to fancy that he loved the bloom of Piver's powders, the slim shape of a white satin corset, the falsehoods of a dozen seasons, the debts of a little gamester, the smiles of a calculating coquette, and the five hundred things of like value, that made up the human entity, known as Lady Dolly. He could see her, as he had seen her first; a little gossamer figure under the old elms, down by the waterside at Hurlingham, when Hurlingham had been in its earliest natal days of glory. There had been a dinner-party for a Sunday evening; he re- membered carrying her tea, and picking her out the big straw- berries under the cedar. They had met a thousand times before that, but had never spoken. He thought her the prettiest creature he had ever seen. She had told him to call on her at Chesham Place; she was always at home at four. He remembered their coming upon a dead pigeon amongst the gardenias, and how she had laughed, and told him to write its elegy, and he had said that he would if he could only spell, but he had never been able to spell in his life. All the nonsense, all the trifles, came back to his memory in a hateful clearness. That was five years ago, and she was as pretty as ever: Piver is the true fordaine de jouvence. She was not changed, but he—he wished that he had been dead like the blue-rock amongst the gardenias. He thought of a serious sweet face, a noble mouth, a low broad brow, with the fair hair lying thickly above it. " Good God!" he thought, " who would ever have dreamt that she could have had such a daughter S" And his heart was sick, and his meditation was bitter. He was of a loyal, faithful, dog-like temper; yet in that moment he turned in revolt against the captivity that had once seemed sweet, and he hated the mother of Vere. A little later Lord Jura told his host that he was very sorry, regretted infinitely, and all that, but he was obliged to go up to Scotland. His father had a great house-party there, and would have no denial. Alone, Lady Dolly said to him, " What does this mean ? what is this for? You know you never go to Camelot; you know that you go to every other house in the kingdom sooner. What did you say it for ? And how dare you say it without seeing if it suit •ae ? It doesn't suit me." " I put it on Camelot because it sounds mors decent; and I •an to go," said Lord Jura, plunging his hands in his pockets. 64 MOTES. " The truth is, Dolly, I don't care to be in this blackguard's house. He is a blackguard, and you're wanting to get him." Lady Dolly turned pale and sick. "What language! How is he anymore a—what you say— than you are, or anybody else ? And pray for what do I want him ? " The broad frank brows of Lord Jura grew stormy as he frowned. " The man is a blackguard. There are things one can't say to women. Everybody knows it. You don't care; you want to get him for the child." "Vera? Good gracious! What is Vera to you if it be what you fancy ? " "Nothing!" said Lord Jura, and his lips were pressed close together, and he did not look at his companion. " Then why—I should think she isn't, indeed!—but why, in the name of goodness " " Look here, Dolly," said the young man sternly. " Look here. I'm death on sport, and I've killed most things, from stripes in the jungle to the red rover in the furrows; I don't affect to be a feeling fellow, or to go in for that sort of sentiment, but there was one thing I never could stand seeing, and that was a little innocent wild rabbit caught in a gin-trap. My keepers daren't set one for their lives. I can't catch you by the throat, or throttle Zouroff as I should a keeper if I caught him at it, so I go to Camelot. That's all. Don't make a fuss. You're going to do a wicked thing, if you can do it, and I won't look on; that's all." Lady Dolly was very frightened. " What do you know about Zouroff?" she murmured hurriedly. " Only what all Paris knows; that is quite enough." Lady Dolly was relieved, and instantly allowed herself to grow angry. "All Paris! Such stuff! As if men were not all alike. Really one would fancy you were in love with Vera yourself!" " Stop that!" said Lord Jura sternly; and she was subdued, and said no more. " I shall go to-morrow," he added carelessly; " and you may as well give me a book or a note or something for the women at Camelot; it will stay their tongues here." " I have a tapestry pattern to send to your sisters," said Lady Dolly, submissive but infuriated. "What do you know about Sergius Zouroff, Jack ? I wish you would tell me." "I think you know it all very well," said Lord Jura. "I think you women know all about all the vices under the sun, only you don't mind. There are always bookcases locked in every library; I don't know why we lock 'em; women know everything. But if the man's rich it don't matter. If the fellows we used to read about in Suetonius were alive now, you'd marry your girls to them and never ask any questions—except about settlements. It's no use my saying anything; you don't care. But I tell you M0TH8. 85 all the same that if you give your daughter when she's scarce six- teen to that brute, you might just as well strip her naked and set her up to auction like the girl in La Coupe on La Femmel" " You grow very coarse," said Lady Dolly, coldly. Lord Jura left the room, and, in the morning, left the house. As the " Ephemeris" went slowly, in a languid wind, across the channel in the grey twilight, he sat on deck and smoked, and grew heavy-hearted. He was not a book-learned man, and seldom read anything beyond the sporting papers, or a French romance; but some old verse, about the Fates making out of our pleasant vices whips to scourge us crossed his mind, as the woods and towers of Felicite receded from his sight. He was young; he was his own master; he was Earl of Jura, and would be Marquis of Shetland. He could have looked into those grand grey eyes of Yere Herbert's with a frank and honest love; he could have been happy, only—only—only ! The Maria Theresa fan came from Camelot, but Jura never returned. That night there was a performance in the little theatre; there was usually-one every other night. The actors enjoyed themselves much more than the guests at Felicite. They all lived in a little maisonnette in the park, idled through their days as they liked, and played when they were told. When his house party bored him beyond endurance, Sergius Zouroff wandered away to that maisonnette m his park at midnight. That evening the piece on the programme was one that was very light. Zouroff stooped his head to Lady Dolly as they were about to move to the theatre. " Send your daughter to her bed; that piece is not fit for her ears." Lady Dolly stared and bit her lip. But she obeyed. She went back and touched Yere's cheek with her fan and caressed her. " My sweet one, you look pale. Go to your room; you do not care much for acting, and your health is so precious " " He must mean it," she thought, as they went into the pretty theatre, 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 Zouroff 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 ot mirth, for which the gestures and jokes of the scene gave excuse. Yet she had never felt so nearly 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 us her fan and played with it. 88 MOTES. " 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 honour 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 ! " " I 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 1 Good heavens! " she cried in an impulse of amaze. " She has avoided me!" said Serge Zouroff, and spoke the truth: then added in his best manner, " And is she not your child?" 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. " It is very warm here," she murmured. " Don't you think if a window were opened. And then you have astonished me so " She shook double her usual drops of chloral out into her glass that night, but they did not give her sleep. " I shall never persuade her I " she thought; gazing with dry, hot eyes at the light swinging before her mirror. The eyes of Yere seemed to look at her in their innocent, scornful serenity, and the eyes of Yere's father too. " Do the dead ever come back ? " she thought; some people say they do." And Lady Dolly, between her soft sheets, shivered, and felt frightened and old. She was on the edge of a crime, and shs had a conscience, though it was a very small and feeble one, and seldom spoke. CHAPTER VIIL Yere had been up with the sunrise, and out with Loris. She had bad the pretty green park and the dewy gardens to herself; she had filled her hands with more flowers than she could carry; her hair and her clothes were fragrant with the smell of mown grass and pressed thyme; she stole back on tiptoe through the long MOTHS, 87 corridors, through the still house, for it was only nine o'clock, and she knew that all the guests of Felicite were still sleeping. To her surprise her mother's door opened, and her mother's voice called her. Vere went in, fresh and bright as wa3 the summer morning Itself, with the dew upon her hair and the smell of the blossoms entering with her, into the warm oppressive air that was laden with the smells of anodynes and perfumes. Her mother had already been made pretty for the day, and a lovely turquoise-blue dressing-robe enveloped her. She opened her arms, and folded the child in them, and touched her forehead with a kiss. " My darling, my sweet child," she murmured, " I have some wonderful news for you; news that makes me very happy, Vera " "Yes?" said Vere, standing with wide-opened expectant eyes, the flowers falling about her, the dew sparkling on her hair. " Yes, too happy, my Vera, since it secures your happiness," murmured her mother. " But perhaps you can guess, dear, though you are so very young, and you do not even know what love means. Vera, my sweetest, my old friend Prince Zouroff has sought you from me in marriage 1" " Mother! " Vere stepped backward, then stood still again ; a speechless amaze, an utter incredulity, an unutterable disgust, all speaking in her face. " Are you startled, darling ? " said Lady Dolly, in her blandest voice. " Of course you are, you are such a child. But if you think a moment, Vera, you will see the extreme compliment it is to you; the greatness it offers you ; the security that the devotion of a " " Mother!" she cried again ; and this time the word was a cry of horror—a protest of indignation and outrage. " Don't call me ' mother' like that. You know I hate it S" said Lady Dolly, lapsing into the tone most natural to her. " ' Mother! mother!' as if I were beating you with the poker, like the people in the police reports. You are so silly, my dear; I cannot think what he can have seen in you, but seen something he has, enough to make him wish to marry you. You are a baby, but I suppose you can understand that. It is a very great and good marriage, Vera; no one could desire auything better. You are exceedingly young, indeed, according to English notions ; but they never were my notions, and I think a girl cannot anyhow 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 colourless 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 88 MOTES. 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 every- body except actually princesses of the blood ? Insult you! When was ever an offer of marriage thought an insult in society !" "I think it can be the greatest one," said Yere, still under her her 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 horrible 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 under- stood than she could have understood the paths travelled 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 4 Waverley.' You have charmed Sergius Zouroff, and it is a very great victory, and if all this surprise and disgust at it is not a mere piece of acting, you must be absolutely brainless, absolutely idiotic ! You cannot seriously mean that a man insults you when he offers you a position that has been coveted by half Europe." " When he knows that I cannot endure him," said Yere with flashing eyes; " it is an insult; tell him so from me. Oh, mother! mother! that you could even call me to hear such a 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 such a stroke of good fortune. I quite do- spaired of you. You are very lovely, but you are old-fashioned, pedantic, unpleasant. You have no chic. You have no malle- ability. You are handsome, and that is all. It is a wonderful thing that you should have made such a coup as this before you MOTES. 89 are even out. You are quite penniless; quite, did you understand that? You have no claim on Mr. Vanderdecken, and I am not at all sure that he will not make a great piece of work when I leave him to pay for your trousseau, as I must do, for I can't pay for it, and none of the Herberts will; they are all poor and proud as church mice, and though Zouroff will of course send you a corbeille, all the rest must come from me, and must he perfect and abundant, and from all the best houses." Yere struck her foot on the floor. It was the first gesture of passion that she had ever given way to since her birth. "That is enough, mother!" she said aloud and very firmly. "Put it in what words you like to Prince Zouroff, but tell him from me that I will not marry him. I will not. That is enough.'" Then, before her mother could speak again, she gathered up the dew-wet flowers in her hand and left the room. Lady Dolly shrugged her shoulders, and swore a little naughty oath, as if she had lost fifty pounds at bezique. She was pale and excited, offended and very angry, but she was not afraid. Girls were always like that, she thought. Only, for the immediate moment it was difficult. She sat and meditated awhile, then made up her mind. She had nerved herself in the night that was just past to put her child in the brazen hands of Moloch because it suited her, because it served her, because she had let her little weak conscience sink utterly, and down in the deeps; and having once made up her mind she was resolved to have her will. Like all weak people, she could be cruel, and she was cruel now. When the midday chimes rang with music from the clock- tower, Lady Dolly went out of her own room downstairs. It was the habit at Felicite for the guests to meet at a one o'clock break- fa§t—being in the country they thought it well to rise early. Serge Zo'uroff, as he met her, smiled. " Eh bien t" he asked. The smile made Lady Dolly feel sick and cold, but she looked softly into his eyes. _ " Dear friend, do not be in haste. My child is such a child— she is flattered—deeply moved—but startled. She has no thought of any such ideas, you know; she can scarcely understand. Leave her to me for a day or two. Do not hurry her. This morning, if you will lend me a pony carriage, I will drive over with her to Le Caprice and stay a night or so. I shall talk to her, and then " Zouroff laughed grimly " Ma belle, your daughter detests me; but I do not mind that. You may say it out; it will make no difference—to us." " You are wrong there," said Lady Dolly so blandly and serenely that even he was deceived, and believed her for once to be speaking the truth. " She neither like? you nor dislikes you, because her 80 MOTES. mind is in its chrysalis state—isn't it a chiysalis, the thing that is rouea up m a saeii asleep t—ana m love ana marriage my Vera is as unconscious as tnose cinna cnfldren yonder holding up the breakfast bouquets. She is cold, you know; that you see for yourself " " Un beau defaut!" 44 Un beau defaut in a girl," assented Lady Dolly. " Yes. I would not have her otherwise, my poor fatherless darling, nor would you, I know. But it makes it difficult to bring her to say 4 yes,' you see; not because she has any feeling against you, but simply because she has no feeling at all as yet. Unless girls are precocious it is always so—hush—don't let them overhear us. We don't want it talked about at present, do we ? " 44 As you like," said Zouroff moodily. He was offended, and yet he was pleased; offended because he was used to instantaneous victory, pleased because this grey-eyed maiden proved of the stuff that he had fancied her. For a moment he thought he would take the task of persuasion out of her mother's hands and into his own, but he was an indolent man, and effort was disagreeable to him, and he was worried at that moment by the pretensions of one of the actresses at the maisonnette a mile off across the park, " My Vera is not very well this morning. She has got a little chill," volunteered Lady Dolly to Madame Nelaguine, and the table generally. "I saw Miss Herbert in the gardens as I went to bed at sunrise," said Fuschia Leach in her high far-reaching voice. "I surmise morning dew is bad for the health." People laughed. It was felt there was 44 something" about Yere and her absence, and the women were inclined to think that, despite Loris and the silver collar, their host had not come to the point, and Lady Dolly was about to retreat. " After all, it would be preposterous," they argued. 44 A child, not even out, and one of those Mull Herberts without a penny." 44 Won't you come down ? " said Lady Dolly sharply to Vere a little later. 44 I will come down if I may say the truth to Prince Zouroff." 44 Until you accept him you will say nothing to him. It ia impossible to keep you here boudant like this. It becomes ridieu- lous. What will all those women say 1 ... I will drive you over to Laure's. We will stay there a few days, and you will hear reason.'" 441 will not marry Prince Zouroff," said Vere. After her first disgust and anger that subject scarcely troubled her. They could not marry her against her will. She had only to be firm, she thought; and her nature was firm almost to stub- bornness. 44 We will see," said her mother, drily. 44 Get ready to go with toe in an hour." MOTES. 91 Vere, left to herself, undid the collar of Loris, made it in » packet, and wrote a little note, which said " I thank you very much, Monsieur, for the honour that I heai from my mother you do me, in your wish that I should marry you. Yet I wonder that you do wish it, because you know well that ] have not that feeling for you which could make me care for 01 respect you. Please to take back this beautiful collar, which is too heavy for Loris. Loris I will always keep, and I am very fond oi him. I should be glad if you would tell my mother that you have had this" letter, and I beg you to believe me, Monsieur, yours gratefully, "Verb Herbert." She read the note several times, and thought that it would do. She did not like to write more coldly, lest she should seem heart- less, and though her first impulse had been to look on the offer as an insult, perhaps he did not mean it so, she reflected ; perhaps he did not understand how she disliked him. She directed her packet, and sealed it, and called her maid. " Will you take that to Monsieur Zouroff at once," she said. u Give it to him into his own hands." The maid took the packet to her superior, Adrienne ; Adrienne the wise took it to her mistress; Lady Dolly glanced at it and put it carelessly aside. "Ah 1 the dog's collar to go to Paris to be enlarged ? very well; leave it there; it is of no consequence just now." Adrienne the wise understood very well. " If Mademoiselle ask you," she instructed her underling, " you will say that Monsieur le Prince had the packet quite safe." But Yere did not even ask, because she had not lived long enough in the world to doubt the good faith even of a waiting- maid. At Bulmer the servants were old-fashioned, like the place, and the Waverley novels. They told the truth, as they wore boot3 that wanted blacking. If the little note had found its way to Serge Zouroff it might have touched his heart; it would have touched his pride, and Yere would have been left free. As it was, the packet reposed amidst Lady Dolly's pocket-handkerchiefs and perfumes till it was burnt with a pastille in the body of a Japanese dragon. Vere, quite tranquil, went to Le Caprice in the sunny afternoon with her mother, never doubting that Prince Zouroff had had it. She did not see him, and thought that it was because he had read her message and resented it. In point of fact she did not see him because he was at the maisonnette in the park, where the femi- nine portion of the troop had grown so quarrelsome and so exacting that they were threatening to make him a scene up at the chateau. " What are your great ladies better than we V" they cried in 92 MOTES. revolt. He granted, that they were no better; nevertheless, the prejudices of society were so constituted that chateau and maison- nette could not meet, and he bade their director bundle them all back to Paris, like a cage of dangerous animals that might at any moment escape. " You will be here for the ball for the Prince de Galles ? " said Princess Nelaguine to Lady Dolly; who nodded and laughed. " To be sure; thanks; I only go for a few days, love." " Are we coming back ? " said Yere, aghast. " Certainly," said her mother sharply, striking her ponies; and the child's heart sank. " But he will have had my letter," she thought, " and then he will let me alone." Le Caprice was a charming house, with a charming chatelaine, and charming people were gathered in it for the sea and the shoot- ing; but Yere began to hate the pretty picturesque women, the sound of the laughter, the babble of society, the elegance and the luxury, and all the graceful nothings that make up the habits and pleasures of a grand house. She felt very lonely in it all, and when, for sake of her beauty, men gathered about her, she seemed 6tupid because she was filled with a shy terror of them; perhaps they would want to marry her too, she thought; and her fair low brow got a little frown on it that made her look sullen. " Your daughter is lovely, ma chere, but she is not sweet-tem- pered like you," said the hostess to Lady Dolly, who sighed. " Ah no 1" she answered, " she is cross, poor pet, sometimes, and hard to please. Now, I am never out of temper, and any little thing amuses me that my friends are kind enough to do. I don't know where Yera got her character; from some dead and gone Herbert, I suppose, who must have been very disagreeable in his generation." And that night and every night she said the same thing to Yere: "You must marry Serge Zouroff; and Yere every night replied, " I have told him I will not. I will not." Lady Dolly never let her know that her letter had been burned. " Your letter ? " she had said when Yere spoke of it. " No; he never told me anything of it. But whatever you might say, he wouldn't mind it, my dear. You take his fancy, and he means to marry you." " Then he is no gentleman," said the girl. " Oh, about that, I don't know," said Lady Dolly. " Your idea of a gentleman, I believe, is a man who makes himself up as Faust or Borneo, and screams for so many guineas a night. We won't discuss that." Yere's face burned, but she was mute. It seemed to her that her mother had grown coarse as well as cruel. There was a hard- ness in her mother that she had never felt before. That her letter should have been read by Serge Zouroff, yet make no impression MOTHS. 93 011 him, seemed to her so dastardly that it left her no hope to move him ; no hope anywhere except in her own resistance. Three days later, Prince Zouroff drove over to Le Caprice, and saw Lady Dolly alone. Yere was not asked for, and was thankful. Her eyes wistfully questioned her mother's when they met, but Lady Dolly's were unrevealing and did not meet her gaze. The house was full of movement and of mirth; there were sauteries every evening, and distractions of all kinds. Lady Dolly was always flirting, laughing, dancing, amusing herself; Yere was silent, grave, and cold. " You are much younger than your daughter, Madame Dolly," said an old admirer; and. Lady Dolly ruffled those pretty curls which had cost her fifty francs a lock. " Ah! Youth is a thing of temperament more than of years. That I do think. My Yera is so hard to please, and I—everything amuses me, and every one to me seems charming." But this sunny, smiling little visage changed when, every even- ing before dinner, she came to her daughter's room, and urged, and argued, and abused, and railed, and entreated, and sobbed, and said her sermon again, and again, and again ; all in vain. Vere said but few words, but they were always of the sams meaning. " I will not marry Prince Zouroff," she said always. " It is of no use to ask me. I will not." And the little frown deepened between her eyes, and the smile that Correze had seen upon her classic mouth now never came there. She grew harassed and anxious. Since her letter had made no impression on him how could she escape this weariness ? One evening she heard some people in the drawing-rooms talk- ing of Correze. They said that he had been singing in the " Fidelio," and surpass- ing himself, and that a young and beautiful Grand Duchess had made herself conspicuous by her idolatry of him; so conspicuous that he had been requested to leave Germany, and had refused, placing the authorities in the difficult position of either receding ridiculously or being obliged to use illegal force; there would be terrible scandal in high places, but Correze was always accapareur des femmes I Yere moved away with a beating heart and a burning cheek; through the murmur of the conversation around her she seemed to hear the exquisite notes of that one divine voice which had dropped and deepened to so simple and tender a solemnity as it had bidden her keep herself unspotted from the world. " What would he say if he knew what they want me to do! " she thought. " If he knew that my mother even—my mother ! " For, not even though her mother was Lady Dolly, could Vere quite abandon the fancy that motherhood was a sweet and sacred 94 MOTES. altar on which the young could seek shelter and safety from all evils and ills. The week at Le Caprice came to an end, and the four days at A.bbaye aux Bois also, and, in the last hours of their two days at the Abbaye, Lady Dolly said to her daughter— "To-morrow is the Princes' ball at Felicity, I suppose you re- member ? " Yere gave a sign of assent. u That is the loveliest frock La Ferri&re has sent you for it; If you had any heart you would kiss me for such a gown, but you have none, you never will have any." Yere was silent. " I must speak to you seriously and for the last time here," said her mother. " We go back to Felicity, and Sergius will want his answer. I can put him off no longer." " He has had it." " How ? " said Lady Dolly, forgetting for the moment the letter she had burned. " Oh, your letter ? Of course he regarded it as a baby's boutade; I am sure it was badly worded enough." " He showed it you, then ? " " Yes; he showed it me. It hurt him, of course ; but it did not change him," said her mother, a little hurriedly. " Men of his age are not so easily changed. I tell you once for all, Yere, that I shall come to you to-night for the last time for your final word, and I tell you that you must be seen at that ball to-morrow night as the fiancee of Zouroff. I am quite resolute, and I will have no more shillyshallying or hesitation." Vere's face grew warm, and she threw back her head with an eager gesture. "Hesitation! I have never Hesitated for an instant. I tell you, mother, and I have told you a hundred times, I will not marry Prince Zouroff." " You will wear the new gown and you shall have my pearls," pursued her mother, as though she had not heard; " and I shall take care that when you are presented to his Royal Highness he shall know that you are already betrothed to Zouroff; it will be the best way to announce it nettement to the world. You will not wear my pearls again, for Zouroff has already ordered yours." Yere started to her feet. " And I will stamp them to pieces if he give them to me; and if you tell the Prince of Wales such a thing of me I will tell him the truth and ask his help ; he is always kind and good." " The pearls are ordered," said her mother unmoved ,- " and you are really too silly for anything. The idea of making the poor Prince a scene!—you have such a passion for scenes, and there is nothing such bad form. I shall come to you to-night after dinner, and let mo find you more reasonable." With that Lady Dolly went out of the room, and out of the MOTHS. 95 Q0UB8, and went on the sea with her adorers, laughing lightly and singing naughty little chansons not ill. But her heart was not as light as her laugh, and, bold little woman as she was when she had nerved herself to do wrong, her nerves troubled her as she thought that the morrow was the last, the very last, day on which she could any longer procrastinate and dally with Serge ZourofF. " I will go and talk to her," said Lady Stoat, who had driven over from Felicbd, when she had been wearied by her dear Lolly's lamentations, until she felt that even her friendship could not bear them much longer. " But she hates him," cried Lady Dolly, for the twentieth time. " They always say that, dear," answered Lady Stoat tranquilly. "They mean it, too, poor little things. It is just as they hated their lessons, yet they did their lessons, dear, and are all the better for having done them. You seem to me to attach sadly too much importance to a child's loutades." " If it were only loutades! But you do not know Vere." " I cannot think, dear, that your child can be so very extra- ordinary unlike the rest of the human species," said her friend with her pleasant smile. " Well, I will go and see this young monster. She has always seemed to me a little Puritan, nothing worse, and that you should have been prepared for, leaving her all her life at Bulmer Chase." Lady Stoat then went upstairs and knocked at the door ofVere's chamber, and entered with the soft, silent charm of movement which was one of the especial graces of that graceful gentlewoman. She kissed the girl tenderly, regardless that Vere drew herself away somewhat rudely, and then sank down in a chair. " My child, do you know I am come to talk to you quite frankly and affectionately," she said in her gentle, slow voice. " You know what friendship has always existed between your dear mother and myself, and you will believe that your welfare is dear to me for her sake—very dear." Vere looked at her, but did not speak. " An uncomfortable girl," thought Lady Stoat, a little discom- fited, but she resumed blandly, " Your mamma has brought mo some news that it is very pleasant to hear, and gives me sincere happiness, because by it your happiness, and through yours hers, is secured. My own dear daughter is only two years older than you are, Vere, and she is married, as you know, and ah! so happy!" "Happy with the Duke of Birkenhead ? " said Vere abruptly. Lady Stoat was, for the moment, a little staggered. u What a very unpleasant child," she thought; " and who would mk she knew anything about poor Birk ! " " Very happy," she continued aloud, " and I am charmed to chink, my dear, that you have the chance of being equally so. Your mamma tells me, love, that you are a little—a little—be- wildered at so brilliant a proposal of marriage as Prince ZouroiFa 98 M0TH8. That is a very natural feeling; of course you had never tnought about any such thing." "I had not thought about it," said Vere bluntly. "I have thought now; but I do not understand why he can want such a thing. He knows very well that I do not like him. If you will tell him for me that I do not I shall be glad; my mother will never tell him plainly enough." " My sweet Vere! " said Lady Stoat smilingly. " Pray do not give me the mission of breaking my host's heart; I would as soon break his china! Of course your mamma will not tell him any- thing of the kind. She is charmed, my dear girl, charmed ! What better future could she hope for, for you ? The Zouroffs are one ot the greatest families in Europe, and I am quite sure your sentiments, your jewels, your everything, will be worthy of the exalted place you will fill." Vere's face grew very cold. " My mother has sent you ?" she said, more rudely than hei companion had ever been addressed in all her serene existence. " Then will you kindly go back to her, Lady Stoat, and tell her it is of no use; I will not marry Prince Zouroff." " That is not very prettily said, my dear. If I am come to talk to you it is certainly in your own interests only. I have seen young girls like you throw all their lives away for mere want of a little reflection." " I have reflected." " Reflected as much as sixteen can!—oh yes. But that is not quite what I mean. I want you to reflect, looking through the glasses of my experience and affection, and your mother's. You are very young, Vere." "Charlotte Corday was almost as young as I am, and Jeanne d'Arc." Lady Stoat stared, then laughed. " I don't know where they come, either of them, in our argu- ment, but if they had been married at sixteen it would have been a very good thing for both of them ! You are a little girl now, my child, though you are nearly six feet high ! You are a demoiselle d marier. You can only wear pearls, and you are not even presented. You are no one; nothing. Society has hundreds like you. If you do not marry, people will fancy you are old whilst you are still twenty; people will say of you ' She is getting passee; she was out years and years ago.' Yes, they will say it even if you are handsomer than ever, and, what will be worse, you will begin to fed it." Vere was silent, and Lady Stoat thought that she had made some impression. "You will begin to feel it; then you will be glad to marry anybody, and there is nothing more terrible than that. You will take a younger son of a baronet, or a secretary of legation that is MOTES. 87 going to Hong Kong or Chili—anything, anybody, to get out of yourself, and not to see your own face in the ball-room mirrors. Now, if you marry early, and marry brilliantly—and this marriage is most brilliant—no such terrors will await you; you can wear diamonds , and, oh Yere! till you wear diamonds you do not know what life is! —you can go where you like, as you like, your own mistress ; you are fosie; you have made yourself a power while your contemporaries are still debutantes in white frocks ; you will have your children, and find all serious interests in them, if you like ; you will have all that is best in life, in fact, and have it before you are twenty; you will be painted by Millais and clothed by Worth ; you will be a politician if you like, or a fashionable beauty if you like, or only a great lady —-perhaps the simplest and best thing of all; and you will be this, and have all this, merely because you married early and married well. My dear, such a marriage is to a girl like being sent on the battle-field to a boy in the army ; it is the baptism of fire with every decoration as its rewards! " " The Cross too ? " said Vere. Lady Stoat, who had spoken eloquently, and, in her own light, sincerely, was taken aback by the irony of the accent and the enigma of the smile. " A most strange child," she thought; " no wonder she worries poor flighty little pussy! " " The Cross ? Oh yes," she said. " What answers to the boy's Iron Cross, I suppose, is to dance in the Quadrille d'Honneur at Court. Princess Zouroff would always be in the Quadrille d'Hon- neur." " Princesse Zouroff may be so. I shall not. And it was of the Cross you wear, and profess to worship, that I thought." Lady Stoat felt a little embarrassed. She bowed her head, and touched the Iona cross in jewels that hung at her throat. " Darling, those are serious and solemn words. A great marriage may be made subservient, like any other action of our lives, to God's service." " But surely one ought to love, to marry ? " " My dear child, that is an idea; love is an idea ; it doesn't last, you know; it is fancy ; what is needful is solid esteem " Lady Stoat paused; even to her it was difficult to speak of solid esteem for Sergius Zouroff. She took up another and safer line oi argument. " You must learn to understand, my sweet Yere, that life is prose, not poetry; Heaven forbid that I should be one to urge you to any sort of worldliness; but still, truth is everything; truth compels me to point out to you that, in the age we live in, a great position means vast power and ability of doing good, and that is not a thing to be slighted by any wise woman who would make her life beautiful and useful. Prince Zouroff adores you; he can give you one of the first positions in Europe; your mother, who loves you tenderly, though she may seem negligent, desires' such a mar- a 98 MOTES. riage for you beyond all others. Opposition on your part is foolishness, my child, foolishness, blindness, and rebellion." The face of Yere as she listened lost its childish softness, and grew very cold. "I understand; my mother does not want me, Mr. Yander- decken does not want me; this Russian prince is the first who asks for me,—so I am to be sold because he is rich. I will not be Bold!" " What exaggerated language, my love! Pray do not exag- gerate ; no one uses inflated language now ; even on the stage they don't, it has gone out. Who speaks of your being sold, as if you were a slave? Quelle idee J A brilliant, a magnificent alliance is open to you, that is all; every unmarried woman in society will envy you. I assure you if Prince Zouroff had solicited the hand of my own daughter, I would have given it to him with content and joy." " I have no doubt you would," said the girl curtly. Lady Stoat's sweet temper rose a little under the words. " You are very beautiful, my dear, but your manners leave very much to be desired," she said almost sharply. " If you were not poor little Dolly's child I should not trouble myself to reason with you, but let you destroy yourself like an obstinate baby as you are. What can be your objection to Prince Sergius ? Now be reasonable for once; tell me." " I am sure he is a bad man." " My love ! What should you know about bad men or good ones either ? " " I am sure he is bad—and cruel." " What nonsense! I am sure he has been charming to you, and you are very ungrateful. What can have given you such an impression of your devoted adorer ? " Vere shuddered a little with disgust. " I hate Mm 1" she said under her breath. Lady Stoat for a moment was startled. " Where could she get her melodrama from ? " she wondered. " Dolly was never melodramatic; nor any of the Herbert people; it really makes one fancy poor pussy must have had a petite faute with a tragic actor!" Aloud she answered gently— " You have a sad habit, my Yere, of using very strong words ; it is not nice; and you do not mean one-tenth that you say in your haste. No Christian ever hates, and in a girl such a feeling would be horrible—if you meant it—but you do not mean it." Yere shut her proud lips closer, but there was a meaning upon them that made her companion hesitate, and feel uncomfortable, and at a loss for words. " How wonderful that pussy should ever have had a daughter like this ! " she thought, and then smiled in a sweet, mild way. MOTHS. @9 " Poor Serge! That he should have been the desired of all Europe, only to be rejected by a child of sixteen! Eeally it is like—who was it?—winning a hundred battles and then dying of a cherry-stone ! There is nothing he couldn't give you, nothing he wouldn't give you, you thankless little creature!" Yere, standing very slender and tall, with her face averted, and her fair head in the glow of the sunset light, made no reply ; but her attitude and her silence were all eloquent. Lady Stoat thought to herself, " Dear, dear! what a charming Iphigenia she would look in a theatre; but there is no use for all that in real life. How to convince her ? " Even Lady Stoat was perplexed. She began to talk vaguely and gorgeously of the great place of the Zouroff family in the world; of their enormous estates, of their Uraline mines, of their Imperial favour, of their right to sit covered at certain courts, of their magnificence in Paris, their munificence in Petersburg, their power, their fashion, and their pomp. Yere waited, till the long discursive descriptions ended of them- selves, exhausted by their own oratory. Then she said very simply and very coldly— " Do you believe in God, Lady Stoat ? " " In God ? " echoed Lady Stoat, shocked and amazed. " Do you or not ? " " My dear! Goodness! Pray do not say such things to me. As if I were an infidel!—IJ " " Then how can you bid me take His name in vain, and marry Prince Zouroff ? " " I do not see the connection," began Lady Stoat vaguely, and very wearily. "I 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 marriage 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 hei' Church, and was bound to accept it unquestioned. So she was silent and vanquished—so far. " May I go now?" said Yere. " Certainly, love, if you wish, but you must let me talk to you again. I am sure you will change and please your mother—your lovely little mother 1—whom you ought to live for, you naughty child, so sweet and so dear as she is." " She has never lived for me," thought Yere, but she did not say so; she merely made the deep courtesy 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. 100 MOTES. " Quel 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 daughter'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 a deaf 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 women 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 never worried, and she had no sympathy with worry in any shape. So that when Lady Dolly came to her weeping, excited, furious, hopeless, over her daughter's wicked obstinacy, Lady Stoat only laughed at her in a gentle rallying way. " You little goose! As if girls were not always like that! She has got Correze in her head still, and she is a difficult sort of nature, I grant. What does it matter after all ? You have only to be firm. She will come to reason." " But I never, never could be firm," sobbed Lady Dolly. " The Herberts are, I am not. And Vere is just like her father ; when I asked him to have a stole and a rochet and look nice, nothing would'induce him, because he said something about his bishop " Lady Stoat, in her superior wisdom, smiled once more. " Was poor Yere so very low in the matter of vestments? How curious; the Herberts were Catholic until James the First's time. But why do you fret so ? The child is a beauty, really a beauty. Even if she persist in her hatred of Zouroff she will marry well, 1 Am sure; and she must not persist in it. You must have commoD sense." " But what can one do ? " said Lady Dolly in desperation. " II is all very easy to talk, but it is not such a little thing to force a girl's will in these days; she can make a fuss, and then societj abuses you, and I think the police even can interfere, and the Lore Chancellor, if she have no father." And Lady Dolly sobbed afresh. MOTHS. 101 u Dear little goose 1" said Lady Stoat consolingly, but rather wearied. " Of course nobody uses force; there are a thousand pleasant ways—children never know what is best for them. We, who are their nearest and dearest, must take care of their tender, foolish, ignorant young lives, committed to us for guidance. Gwendolen even was reluctant—but now in every letter she sends me she says, ' Oh, mamma, how right you were!' That is what your Yere will say to you, darling, a year hence, when she will have been Princess Zouroff long enough to have got used to him." Lady Dolly shivered a little at all that the words implied. Her friend glanced at her. " If Zouroff cause you apprehension for any reason I am unaware of," she said softly, " there are others ; though, to be sure, as your pretty child is portionless, it may be difficult " " No, it must be Zouroff," said Lady Dolly, nervously and quickly. " She has no money, as you say; and every one wants money nowadays." " Except a Russian," said Lady Stoat, with a smile. " Then, since you wish for him, take him now he is to be had. But 1 would advise you not to dawdle, love. Men like him, if they are denied one fancy soon change to another; and he has all the world to console him for Vere's loss." " I have told him he should have her answer in a day or two. I said she was shy, timid, too surprised ; he seems to like that." "Of course he likes it. Men always like it in women they mean to make their wives. Then, in a day or two, you must con- vince her; that is all. I do not say it will be easy with her very obstinate and peculiar temperament. But it will be possible." Lady Dolly was mute. She envied her dear Adine that hand of steel under the glove of velvet. She herself had it not. Lady Dolly was of that pliant temper, which, according to the temperature it dwells in, becomes either harmless or worthless. She had nothing of the maitresse femme about her. She was always doing things that she wished were undone, and knotting entanglements that she could not un- ravel. She was no ruler of others, except in a coquettish, petulant fashion, of " Jack—and the rest." And she had that terrible drawback to comfort and impediment to success—a conscience, that was sluggish and fitful, and sleepy and feeble, but not wholly dead. Only this conscience, unhappily, was like a very tiny, weak swimmer, stemming a very strong op- posing tide. In a moment or two the swimmer gave over, and the opposing tide had all its own way. After dinner that evening, whilst the rest were dancing, Yero slipped away unnoticed to her own room, a little tiny turret-room, of which the window almost overhung the sea. She opened the lattice, and leaned out into the cool fragrant night. The sky was 102 MOTHS. cloudless, the sea silvery in the moonlight; from the gardens below there arose the scent of datura and tuberose. It was all so peace- ful and so sweet, the girl could not understand why, amidst it all, she must be so unhappy. Since Zouroff had had her letter there was no longer any hope of changing his resolve by telling him the truth, and a sombre hatred began to grow up in her against this man, who seemed tc her her tormentor and her tyrant. What hurt her most was that her own mother should urge this horror upon her. She could see no key to the mystery of such a wish except in the fact that her mother cruelly desired to be rid of her at all cost; and she had written a letter to her grandmother at Bulmer Chase— a letter that lay by her on the table ready to go down to the post- bag in the morning. "Grandmamma loves me in her own harsh way," the child thought. " She will take me back for a little time at least, and then, if she do not like to keep me, perhaps I could keep myself in some way; I think I could if they would let me. I might go to the Fraulein in her own country and study music at Baireuth, and make a career of it. There would be no shame in that." And the thought of Correze came softly over her as the memory of fair music will come in a day-dream. Not as any thought of love. She had read no romances save dear Sir Walter's, which alone, of all the erring tribe of fiction* held a place on the dark oak-shelves of the library at Bulmer. Correze was to her like a beautiful fancy rather than a living being,—a star that shot across a summer sky and passed unseen to brighter worlds than ours. He was a saint to the child—he who to himself was a sad sinner—and his words dwelt in her heart like a talisman against all evil. She sat all alone, and dreamt innocently of going into the mystic German land and learning music in all its heights and depths, and living nobly, and being never wedded (" Oh, never, never!" she said to herself with a burning face and a shrinking heart); ana some day meeting Correze, the wonder of the world, and looking at him without shame and saying, " I have done as you told me; I have never been burnt in the flame as you feared. Are you glad ? " It did not, as yet, seem hard to her to do so. The world was to her personified in the great vague horror of Serge ZourofTs name, and it cost her no more to repulse it than it costs a child to flee from some painted monster that gapes at it from a wall. This night, after Lady Stoat's ineffectual efforts at conversion, Lady Dolly herself once more sought her daughter, and renewed the argument with more asperity and more callousness than she had previously shown. MOTHB. 103 Vere was still sitting in her own chamber, trying to read, but, In truth, always thinking of the bidding of Correze, " Keep your- Belf unspotted from the world." Dreaming so, with her hands buried in the golden clustering hair, and her lids drooped over her eyes, she started at the voice of her mother; and, with pain and impatience, listened with unwilling ear to the string of reproaches, entreaties, and censure that had lately become as much the burden of her day as the morning- prayer at Bulmer had been, droned by the duchess's dull voice to the sleepy household. Yere raised herself and listened, with that dutifulness of the old fashion which contrasted so strangely in her, her mother thought, with her rebellion and self-willed character. But she grew very weary. Lady Dolly, less delicate in her diplomacy than her friend had been, did not use euphuisms at all, nor attempt to take any high moral point. Broadly and unhesitatingly she painted all that Sergius Zouroff had it in his power to bestow, and the text of her endless sermon was, that to reject such gifts was wickedness. At the close she grew passionate. " You think of love," she said. " Oh, it is of no use your say- ing you don't; you do. All girls do. I did. I married your father. We were as much in love as any creatures in a poem. When I had lived a month in that wretched parsonage by the sea, I knew what a little fool I had been. I had had such wedding presents!—such presents ! The queen had sent me a cachemire for poor papa's sake; yet, down in that horrid place, we had to eat pork, and there was only a metal teapot! Oh, you smile! it is nothing to smile at. Vere used to smile just as you do. He would have taken the cachemire to wrap an old woman up in, very pro- bably; and he wouldn't have known whether he ate a peach or a pig. I knew ; and whenever they put that tea in the metal teapot, I knew the cost of young love. Kespect your father's memory ? Stuff! I am not saying anything against him, poor dear fellow; he was very good—in his way, excellent; but he had made a mistake, and I too. I told him so twenty times a day, and he only sighed and went out to his old women. I tell you this only to show you I know what I am talking about. Love and marriage are two totally different things ; they ought never to be named together ; .they are cat and dog; one kills the other. Pray do not stare so; you make me nervous." "It is not wicked to love?" said Vere slowly. "Wicked? no; what nonsense! It amuses one; it doesn't last." " A great love must last, till death, and after it," said the child, with solemn eyes, " After it ?" echoed Lady Dolly with a little laugh. " I'm afraid that would make a very naughty sort of place of Heaven. 104 MOTES. Don't look so shocked, child. You know nothing about it. Believe me, dear, where two lovers go on year after year, it is only for Pont de Veyle's reason to Madame de Deffand : ' Nous sommes si mor- tellement ennuyes l'un de l'autre que nous ne pouvons plus nous quitter!'" Vere was silent. Her world of dreams was turned upside down, and shaken rudely. " You have no heart, Vere; positively none," said her mother bitterly, resuming all the old argument. " I can scarcely think you are my child. You see me wearing myself to a shadow for your sake, and yet you have no pity. What in heaven's name can you want? You are only sixteen, and one of the first marriages in Europe opens to you. You ought to go on your knees in thankful- ness, and yet you hesitate ? " " I do not hesitate at all," said Vere quickly. " I refuse I" She rose as she spoke, and looked older by ten years. There was a haughty resolve in her attitude that cowed her mother for an instant. " I refuse," she said again. " And, if you will not tell Monsieur Zouroff so yourself, I will tell him to-morrow. Listen, mother, I have written to Bulmer, and I will go back there. Grandmamma will not refuse to take me in. I shall be a trouble and care to you no longer. I am not made for your world nor it for me. I will go. I have some talent, they have always said, and at least I have per- severance. I will find some way of maintaining myself. I want so little, and I know enough of music to teach it; and so at least a shall be free and no burden upon any one." She paused, startled by her mother's laughter; such laughter as she, in a later day, heard from Croizette when Croizette was acting her own deathbed on the stage of the Franpais. Lady Dolly's shrill, unnatural, ghastly laughter echoed through the room. "Is that your scheme? To teach music? And Correze to teach you, I suppose? 0 la telle idee! You little fool! you little idiot! how dare you ? Because you are mad, do you think we are mad too ? Go to Bulmer now t Never! I am your mother, and you shall do what I choose. What I choose is that you shall marry Zouroff." " I will not." " Will not? will not? I say you shall! " " And I say that I will not." They confronted one another; the girl's face pale, clear, and cold in its fresh and perfect beauty, the woman's grown haggard, fevered, and fierce in its artificial prettiness. " I will not," repeated Vere with her teeth closed. " And my dead father would say I was right; and I will tell this man to- morrow that I loathe him; and, since surely he must have some pride to be stung, he will ask for me no more then." MOTHS. 10b "Vere! you kill me!" screamed her mother; and, in truth, she fainted, her pretty curly perruque twisting off her head, her face deathly pallid save for the unchanging bloom of cheek and mouth. It was but a passing swoon, and her maid soon restored her to semi-consciousness and then bore her to her room. "What a cold creature is that child," thought Adrienne, of Vere. " She sees miladi insensible, and stands there with never a tear, or a kiss, or a cry. What it is to have been brought up in England!" Vere, left alone, sat awhile lost in thought, leaning her head on her hands. Then she rang and bade them post the letter to Bui- mer; the dark and drearsome, but safe and familiar home of her lost childhood. The letter gone, she undressed and went to bed. It was mid- night. She soon was asleep. Innocent unhappiness soon finds this rest; it is the sinful sorrow of later years that stares, with eyes that will not close, into the hateful emptiness of night. She slept deeply and dreamlessly, the moonbeams through the high window finding her out where she lay, her slender limbs, supple as willow wands, in calm repose, and her long lashes lying on her cheeks. Suddenly she woke, startled and alarmed. A light fell on her eyes; a hand touched her; she was no longer alone. She raised herself in her bed, and gazed with a dazzled sight and vague terror into the yellow rays of the lamp. " Vere! It is I! it is I! " cried her mother with a sob in her voice. And Lady Dolly dropped on her knees beside the bed; her real hair dishevelled on her shoulders, her face without false bloom and haggard as the face of a woman of twice her own years. "Vere, Vere! you can save me," she muttered, with her hands clasped tight on the girl's. " Oh, my dear, I never thought to tell you; but, since you will hear no reason, what can I do? Vere, wake up—listen. I am a guilty, silly woman; guiltier, sillier, than you can dream. You are my child after all, and owe me some obedience; and you can save me. Vere, Vere ! do not be cruel; do not misjudge me, but listen. You must marry Sergius Z our off." It was dawn when Lady Dolly crept away from her daughter's chamber; shivering, ashamed, contrite, in so far as humiliation and regret make up contrition ; hiding her blanched face with the hood of her wrapper as though the faint, white rays of daybreak were spectators and witnesses against her. Vere lay quite still, as she had fallen, upon her bed, her face upturned, her hands clenched, her shut lips blue as with great cold. She had promised what her mother had asked. 106 MOTES. CHAPTER IX. On the morrow it was known to ail the guests of the house at which they were staying that the head of the Princes Zouroff waa to marry the daughter of the Lady Dorothy Yanderdecken. On the morrow Lady Dolly drove back to Felicite, with her daughter beside her. She was victorious. The sun was strong, and the east wind cold; she was glad that they were so. The eyes of her daughter were heavy with dark circles beneath them, and her face was blanched to a deadly pallor, which changed to a cruel crimson flush as the turrets and belfries of the chateau of the Zouroffs came in sight above the woods of its park. They had driven the eight miles from Le Caprice in unbroken silence. " If she would only speak! " thought Lady Dolly; and yet she felt that she could not have borne it if her companion had spoken. They drove round to a petite entree at the back of the house, and were met by no one but some bowing servant. She had begged in a little note that it might be so, making some pretty plea for Vere of maiden shyness. They were shown straight to their rooms. It was early; noonday. The chateau was quite still. At night the great ball was to be given to the English princes, but the house- hold was too well trained to make any disturbance with their preparations. Down the steps of the great terrace there was stretched scarlet cloth, and all the face of the building was hung with globes and cressets of oil, to be lit at dark. These were the only outward signs that anything more brilliant than usual was about to take place. "You will come to breakfast?" said Lady Dolly, pausing at the threshold of her room. It was the first word she had said to Yere since the dawn, when they had parted, and her own voice sounded strange to her. Vere shuddered as with cold. " I cannot. Make some excuse." "What is the use of putting off?" said her mother fretfully. " You will be ill; you are ill. If you should be ill to-night, what will every one say? what will he think? what shall I do?" Yere went into her chamber and locked her door. She locked out even her maid; flung her hat aside, and threw herself forward on the bed, face downward, and there lay. Lady Dolly went into her chamber, and glanced at her own face with horror. Though made up, as well as usual, for the day, she looked yellow, worn, old. " I must go down!" she thought—how selfish youth was, and MOTHS. 107 how hard, a thing was motherhood! She had herself dressec.1 beautifully aDd took some ether. She had sunk her drowned conscience fathoms deep, and begun once more to pity herself for the obstinacy and oddness of the child to whom she had given birth. Why could not the girl be like any others ? The ether began to move in her veins and swim in her head; her eyes grew brighter. She went out of her room and along the corridor to the staircase, fastening an autumn rose or two in her breast, taken from the bouquet of her dressing-table. As she glanced down the staircase into the hall where the servants in the canary-coloured liveries of the house were going to and fro, she thought of all the rank and riches of which Felicitd was only one trifling portion and symbol, and thought to herself that—after all —any mother would have done as she had done ; and no maiden surely could need a higher reward for the gift of her innocence to the minotaur of a loveless marriage. " If I had been married like that!" she thought; and felt that she had been cruelly wronged by destiny ; if she had been married like that, how easy it would have been to have become a good woman! What could Vere complain of?—the marriage was per- feet in a worldly sense, and in any other sense—did it matter what It was? So the ether whispered to her. She began to taste the sweets of her victory and to forget the bitter, as the ether brought its consoling haze over all painful memories, and lent its stimulating brightness to all personal vanities. After all it was very delightful to go down those stairs, knowing that when she met all those dear female friends whom she detested, and who detested her, no one could pity her and every one must envy her. She had betrothed her daughter to one of the richest and best born men in all Europe. Was it not the crown ol maternity, as maternity is understood in society ? So down she went, and crossed the great vestibule, looking young, fair, and bewitching with the roses in her bosom, and an admirably chosen expression on her face, half glad and half plain- live, and with a flush under her paint that made her look prettier than ever; her eyes sparkled, her smile was all sunshine and sweet- ness, she pressed the hands of her most intimate friends with an eloquent tenderness, she was exquisitely arrayed with cascades ot old Mechlin falling from her throat to her feet. " A mother only lives to be young again in her child!" she said softly—and knew that she looked herself no more than twenty years old as she said it. Sergius Zouroff, profuse in delicate compliment to her aloud, said to himself— « Brava, naughty Dolly! Bis-his I Will she ever be like you, 108 MOTES. I wonder ? Perhaps. The world makes you all alike after a little while." He was ready to pay a high price for innocence, because it was a new toy that pleased him. But he never thought that it would last, any more than the bloom lasts on the peach. He had no illusions. Since it would be agreeable to brush it off himself, he was ready to purchase it. There was a sense of excitement and of disappointment in the whole house-party; and Princesse Nelaguine ran from one to another, with her little bright Tartar eyes all aglow, murmuring " Charmee, charmee, charmee! " to impatient ears. " Such a beast as he is 1 " said the men who smoked his cigars and rode his horses. " And she who looked all ice and innocence!" said the women, already in arms against her. Yere did not come down to taste the first-fruits of her triumph. At the great midday breakfast, where most people assembled, she was absent. Zouroff himself laid another bouquet Of orchids by her plate, but she was not there to receive the delicate homage. "Mademoiselle Vera has not risen?" he asked now, with an angry contraction of his low brows, as no one came where the orchids were lying. " Yera had a headache," said Lady Dolly serenely aloud. " Or said so," she murmured to his ear alone. "Don't be annoyed. She was shy. She is a little farouche, you know, my poor darling." Zouroff nodded, and took his caviare. " What did I predict, love!" murmured Lady Stoat, of Stitchley, taking her friend aside after breakfast. " But how quickly you succeeded! Last evening only you were in despair! Was the resistance only a feint? Or what persuasions did you bring to bear ? " " I threatened to send her to Bulmer Chase!" said Lady Dolly with a little gay laugh. Lady Stoat laughed also. "I wonder what you did do," she reflected, however, as she laughed. " Oh, naughty little pussy—foolish, foolish little pussy! —to have any secrets from me! " The day wore away and Yere Herbert remained unseen in Felicite. The guests grew surprised, and the host angered. Princesse Nelaguine herself had ascended to the girl's room, and had been denied. People began to murmur that it was odd. " Go and fetch her," said Zouroff in a fierce whisper. " It is time that I at least should see her—unless you have told me a lie." "Unless she be reaily ill,. I suppose you mean, you cruel creature!" said her mother reproachingly; but she obeyed him and went. . - " Girls are so fond of tragedy!" reflected Lady Stoat, recalling MOTHS. 109 episodes in the betrothal of her own daughter, and passages that had preceded it. It was now five o'clock. The day had been chilly, as it is at times along the channel shores, even in summer. Several persons were in the blue-room, so called because of its turquoise silk walls and its quantities of Delf, Nankin, Savona, and other blue china ranged there. It was the room for afternoon tea. Several of the ladies were there in tea-gowns of the quaintest and prettiest, that allowed them to lie about in the most gracefully tired attitudes. The strong summer sun found its way only dimly there, and the sweet smells of the flowers and of the sea were overborne by the scent of the pastilles burning in the bodies of blue china monsters. Zouroff, who at times was very negligent of his guests, was pacing up and down the long dim chamber impatiently, and every now and then he glanced at the door. He did not look once at the pretty groups, like eighteenth-century pictures tinged with the languor of odalisques, that were sipping tea out of tiny cups in an alcove lined with celadon and crackling. The tinkle of the tea- cups and the ripple of the talk ceased as the door at the farther end opened, and Yere entered, led by her mother. She was white, and cold, and still; she did not raise her eyelids. Zouroff approached with eager steps, and bowed before her with the dignity that he could very well assume when he chose. " Mademoiselle," he said softly, " is it true that you consent to make the most unworthy of men the most happy ? " He saw a slight shudder pass over her as if some cold wind had smitten her. She did not lift her eyes. " Since you wish, monsieur " she answered very low, and then paused. " The adoration of a life shall repay you," he murmured in the conventional phrase, and kissed her hand. In his own thoughts he said: "Your mother has made you do this, and you hate me. Never mind." Then he drew her hand on his arm, and led her to the Princess Nelaguine. "My sister, embrace your sister. I shall have two angels henceforth instead of one, to watch and pray for my erring soul! " Princess Nelaguine did not smile. She kissed the cold cheek of the girl with a glisten of tears in her eyes. " What a sacrifice ! what a martyrdom!" she thought. " Ah, the poor child!—but perhaps he will ranger—let us hope." All the while Vera might have been made of marble, she was bo calm and so irresponsive, and she. never once lifted her eyes. " Will you not look at me once ? " he entreated. She raised her lids and gave him one fleeting hunted glance. Cruel though he was and hardened, Sergius Zouroff felt that look go to his soul. "Bah! how she loathes me I" he said in his teeth. But the no M0TE8. compassion in him died out almost as it was born, and the base appetites in him were only whetted and made keener by this knowledge. Lady Stoat glided towards them and lifted her lips to Vera's cheek. "My sweet child! so charmed, so delighted," she whispered. '' Did I not say how it would be when your first shyness had" time to fold its tents, as the poem says, and steal away ? " "You are always a prophetess of good—and my mother's friend," said Yere. They were almost the first words she had spoken, and they chilled even the worldly breast of her mother's friend. There was an accent in them which told of a childhood perished in a night; of an innocence and a faith stabbed, and stricken, and buried for ever more. " You are only sixteen, and you will never be young any more!" thought Princess Nelaguine, hearing the cold and bitter accent of those pregnant words. But the ladies that made the eighteenth-century picture had broken up and issued from the alcove, and were offering congratula- tions and compliments in honeyed phrases; and no one heeded or had time for serious thought. Only Lady Dolly, in a passionate murmur, cried, unheeded by any, to her daughter's ear— " For heaven's sake smile, blush, seem happy! What will they say of you to look at you like this ?—they will say that I coerce you!" " I do my best," answered Yere coldly. " My lovely mother-in-law," muttered Prince Zouroff, bending to Lady Dolly, as he brought her a cup of tea, " certainly you did not lie to me this morning when you told me that your Vera would marry me; but did you not lie—just a little lie, a little white one —when you said she would love me ? " " Love comes in time," murmured Lady Dolly hurriedly. Serge Zouroff laughed grimly. "Does it? I fear that experience tells one rather that with time—it goes." "Yours may; hers will come—the woman's always comes last." " Ma chsre 1 your new theories are astounding. Nevertheless, as your son-in-law, I will give in my adhesion to them. Henceforth all the sex of your Vera—and yourself—is purity and perfection in tny sight!" Lady Dolly smiled sweetly in his face. "It is never too late to be converted to the truth," she said playfully, whilst she thought, " Oh you beast! If I could strangle you!" Meanwhile Princess Nelaguine was saying with kindness in her tone and gaze— "My sweet child! you look chilly and pals, Were you wise to leave your room out of goodness to us ? " M0TH8. Ill ."lam cold," murmured Vere faintly. " I should be glad if 1 might go away—for a little." "Impossible," said the Princess; and added, "Dear, reflect; it will look so strange to people. My brother " {< I will stay, then," said Yere wearily, and she sat down and received the homage of one and the felicitations of another, still with her eyes always cast downward, still with her young face passionless, and chill as a mask of marble. ° " An hour's martyrdom more or less—did it matter ? " she said to herself. All her life would be a martyrdom, a long mute martyrdom, now. A few hours later her maid dressed her for the ball. She had no need of her mother's pearls, for those which had been ordered from Paris jewellers were there; the largest and purest pearls that ever Indian diver plunged for into the deep sea. When they were clasped about her they seemed to her in no way different, save in their beauty, to the chains locked on slave-girls bought for the harem. But that was because she had been taught such strangs ideas. She was quite passive. She resisted nothing; having given away in the one great thing, why should she dispute or rebel for trifles ? A sense of unreality had come upon her, as it comes on people in the first approach of fever. _ She walked, sat, spoke, heard, all as in a dream. It seemed to her as if she were already dead : only the pain was alive in her, the horrible sickening pain that would never be stilled, but only grow sharper and deeper with each succeeding hour. She sat through the banquet, and felt all eyes upon her, and was indifferent. Let them stare as they would, as they would stare at the sold slave-girl. She has too much self-possession for such a child, said the women there, and they thought that Sergius Zouroff would not find in her the young saint that he fancied he had won. Her beauty was only greater for her extreme pallor and ths darkness beneath her eyes. But it was no longer the beauty of an innocent unconscious child; it was that of a woman. Now and then she glanced at her mother, at that pretty co- quettish little figure, semi-nude, as fashion allowed, and with diamonds sparkling everywhere on her snow-white skin; with a perpetual laugh on cherubic lips, and gaiety and grace in each movement. And whenever she glanced there, a sombre scornful fire came into her own gaze, an unutterable contempt and disgust watched wearily from the fair windows of her soul. She was thinking to herself as she looked: Honour thy father and thy mother. That was the old law 1 Were there such women then as she was now ? Or was that law too a dead letter, as the Marriage Sacrament was? 112 MOTES. " She is exquisitely lovely," said the great personage in whose honour the banquet and the ball were being given. " In a year or two there will be nothing so beautiful as she will be in all Europe. But—is she well—is she happy ? Forgive the question." " Oh, sir, she is but made nervous by the honour of your praise," said her mother, who was the person addressed. " Your Boyal Highness is too kind to think of her health, it is perfect; indeed I may say, without exaggeration, that neither morally nor physically has my sweet child given me one hour's anxiety since her birth." The Prince bowed, and said some pleasant gracious words; but his conviction remained unchanged by Lady Dolly's assurance of her daughter's peace and joy. Vere was led out by Prince Zouroff to join the Quadrille d'Honneur. " This is the Iron Cross!" she thought, and a faint bitter smile parted her lips. She never once lifted her eyes to meet his. " Cannot you tell me you are happy, mon enfant t" he murmured once. She did not look at him, and her lips scarcely moved as she answered him. " I obey my mother, monsieur. Do not ask more." Zouroff was silent. The dusky red of his face grew paler; he felt a momentary instinct to tear his pearls off her, and bid her be free; then the personal loveliness of her awoke too fiercely that mere appetite which is all that most men and many women know of love; and his hands clenched close on hers in the slow figure of the dance. A stronger admiration than he had ever felt for her rose in him, too. He knew the bitterness and the revolt that were in her, yet he saw her serene, cold, mistress of herself. It was not the childlike simplicity that he had once fancied that he loved her for, but it was a courage he respected, a quality he understood. " One might send her to Siberia and she would change to ice; she would not bend," he thought; and the thought whetted his passion to new fierceness and tenacity. The ball was gorgeous; the surprises were brilliant and novel; the gardens were illumined to the edge of the sea till the fishers out in the starry night thought the shore was all on fire. The great persons in whose honour it was, were gratified and amused—the grace and grandeur of the scene were like old days of Versailles or of Venice. The child moved amidst it, with the great pearls lying on her throat and encircling her arms, and her eyes had a blind un- conscious look in them like those of eyes that have recently lost their sight, and are not yet used to the eternal darkness. But she spoke simply and well, if seldom; she moved with correct grace in the square dance; she made her perfect courtesy with the eighteenth-century stateliness in it; men looked, and MOTES. 113 wondered, and praised her, and women said with a sigh of envv, " Only sixteen! " Only sixteen; and she might have said as the young emperor * said, when he took his crown, "0 my youth, 0 my youth! farewell I" Once her mother had the imprudence to speak to her; she whispered in her ear— " Are you not rewarded, love? Are you not content?" Vere looked at her. " I have paid your debt. Be satisfied." A great terror passed like a cold wind, over the little selfish, cruel, foolish woman, and she trembled. The next morning a message came to her from her old Northum- brian home. " My house must always be open for my dead son's child, and my protection, such as it is, will always he hers." It was signed Sarah Mull and Cantire. Vere read it, sitting before her glass in the light of the full day, whilst her woman undid the long ropes of pearls that were twisted about her fair hair. Two slow tears ran down her cheeks and fell on the rough paper of the telegram. " She loves me!" she thought, " and what a foolish, fickle, sin- ning creature I shall for ever seem to her ! " Then, lest with a moment's longer thought her firmness should fail her, she wrote back in answer: "You are so good, and I am grateful. But I see that it is best that I should marry as my mother wished. Pray for me." The message winged its way fleeter than a bird, over the grey sea to where the northern ocean beat the black Northumbrian rocks; and an old woman's heart was broken with the last pang of a sad. old age. A day or two later the house-party of Felicitd broke up, and the chateau by the Norman sea was left to its usual solitude. Lady Stoat went to stay with her daughter, the Lady Birkenhead, who was at Biarritz, and would go thence to half a dozen great French and English houses. Prince Zouroff and his sister went to Tsarsko Selo, as it was necessary for him to see his emperor, and Lady Dolly took her daughter straight to Paris. Paris in the commencement of autumn was a desert, but she had a pretty apartment in the Avenue Josephine. The marriage waB fixed to take place in November, and two months was not too much for all the preparations which she needed to make. Besides, Lady Dolly preferred that her daughter should see as few persons as pos- sible. What was she afraid of?—she scarcely knew. She was vaguely afraid of everything. She was so used to breaking her words that a child's promise seemed to her a thing as slight as a spider's gossamer shining in the dew. It was safest, she fancied, for Vere to see no one, and to a mem- Franz Josef. I 114 MOTH8. fcer of the great world there is no solitude so complete as a city out of its season. So she shut Yere in her gilded, and silvered, and over- decorated, and over-filled, rooms in the Avenue Josephine, and kept her there stifled and weary, like a woodland bird hung in a cage in a boudoir; and never let the girl take a breath of air save by her side in her victoria out in the Bois in the still, close evenings. Vere made no opposition to anything. When St. Agnes gave her young body and her fair soul up to torment, did she think of the shape of the executioner's sword ? Lady Dolly was at this time much worried too about her own immediate affairs. Jura was gone to India on a hunting and shooting tour with two officers of his old regiment, and he had written very briefly to say so to her, not mentioning any period for his return. He meant to break it all off, thought Lady Dolly, with an irritated humiliation rankling in her. Two years before she would have been Didone infuriata; but time tempers every- thing, and there were always consolations. The young dandy who had won the Grand Prix was devoted and amusing; it could not be said that Jura had been either of late. She had got used to him, and she had not felt it necessary to be always en heaute for him, w.hich was convenient. Besides, there were heaps of things he had got into the way of doing for her, and he knew all her habits and tastes; losing him was like losing a careful and familiar servant. Still she was not inconsolable. He had grown boorish and stupid in the last few months; and, though he knew thousands of her secrets, he was a gentleman—they were safe with him, as safe as the letters she had written him. But her vanity was wounded. "Just because of that child's great grey eyes!—■" she thought angrily. ^ Classic Clytemnestra, when murdered by her son, makes a grander figure certainly, but she is not perhaps more deeply wounded than fashionable Faustina, when eclipsed by her daughter. " You look quite worn, poor pussy !" said Lady Stoat tenderly, as she met her one day in Paris. " When you ought to be so pleased and so proud ! " Lady Stoat, who was very ingenious and very penetrating, left no means untried by which to fathom the reasons of the sudden change of Vere. Lady Stoat read characters too well not to know that neither caprice nor malleability were the cause of it. " She has been coerced; but how ? " she thought; and brought her microscope of delicate investigation and shrewd observation to bear upon the subject. But she could make nothing of it. " 1 do what my mother wishes," Vere answered her, and an- swered her nothing more. "If you keep your secrets as well when you are married," thought Lady Stoat, " you will be no little trouble to your bus- band, tns dear." MOTHS. 115 Aloud, of course she said only— " So right, darling, so very right. Your dear little mother has had a great deal of worry in her life; it is only just that she should find full compensation in you. And I am quite sure you will be happy, Yere. You are so clever and serious; you will have a salon, I dare say, and get all the politicians about you. That will suit you better than frivolity, and give you an aim in society. Without an aim, love, society is sadly like playing cards for counters. One wants a lover to meet, a daughter to chaperone, a cause to advance, a something beside the mere pleasure of showing oneself. You will never have the lover, I am sure, and you cannot have the daughter just yet; so, if I were you, I would take the cause—it does not matter what cause in the least—say England against Russia or Russia against England; but throw yourself into it, and it will amuse you, and it will be a safeguard to you from the dangers that bsset every beautiful young wife in the world. It is a melancholy thing to confess, and a humiliating one, that all human beings are so made that they never can go on playing only for counters!" And Lady Stoat, smiling her sweetest, went away from Vere with more respect than she had ever felt before for feather-headed little pussy, since pussy had been able to do a clever thing unakiu, and had a secret that her friend did not know. " Foolish pussy!" thought her friend Adine. " Oh, foolish pussy, to have a secret from me. And it takes such a wise head and such a long head to have a secret 1 It is as dangerous as a packet of dynamite to most persons." Aloud to Lady Dolly she said only— " So glad, dear love, oh, so glad ! I was quite sure with a little reflection that the dear child would see the wisdom of the step we wished her to take. It is such an anxiety off your mind; a girl with you in the season would have harassed you terribly. Really I do not know which is the more wearing: an heiress that one is afraid every moment will be got at by some spendthrift, or a dear little penniless creature that one is afraid will never marry at all; and, with Yere's peculiar manners and notions, it might have been very difficult. Happily, Zouroff has only admired her lovel) classic head and has never troubled himself about what is inside it. I think sl£ will be an astonishment to him—rather. But, to be sure, after six months in the world, she will change as they all do." " Vere will never change," said. Lady Dolly irritably, and with a confused guilty little glance at her friend. " Yere will be always half an angel and half an imbecile as long as ever she lives." " Imbeciles are popular people," said Lady Stoat with a smile. " As for angels, no one cares for them much about modern houses, except in terra cotta." " It is not you who should say so," returned Lady Dolly tenderly. " Oh, my dear! " answered her fr iend with a modest sigh of da' 116 MOTES. preciatlon. " I have no pretensions—I am only a poor, weak, and very imperfect creature. But one thing I may really say of myself, and that is, that I honestly love young girls and do my best for them; and I think not a few have owed their life's happiness to me. May your Vere be of the number!" " I don't think she will ever be happy," said Lady Dolly im- patiently, with a little confused look of guilt. " She doesn't care a bit about dress." " That is a terrible lacune certainly," assented Lady Stoat with a smile. " Perhaps, instead, she will take to politics—those serious girls often do—or perhaps she will care about her children." Lady Dolly gave a little shudder. What was her daughter but a child ? It seemed only the other day that the little fair baby had tumbled about among the daisies on the vicarage lawn, and poor dead Yere in his mellow gentle voice had recited, as he looked at her, the glorious lines to his child of Coleridge. How wretched she had been then!—how impatient of the straitened means, the narrow purse, the country home, the calm religious life! How wretched she would have been now could she have gone back to it! Yet, with the contradiction of her sex and character, Lady Dolly for a moment wished with all her soul that she had never left that narrow home, and that the child were now among the daisies. One day, when they were driving down the Avenue Marigny, her mother pointed out to Yere a row of lofty windows au premier, with their shutters shut", but with gorgeous autumn flowers hang- ing over their gilded balconies; the liveried suisse was yawning in the doorway. " That is where your Faust-Eomeo lives," said Lady Dolly, who could never bring herself to remember the proverb, let sleeping dogs lie. " It is full of all kinds of beautiful things, and queer ancient things too; he is a connoisseur in his way, and everybody gives him such wonderful presents. He is making terrible scandal just now with the young Grand-Duchess. Only to think of what you risked that day boating with him makes one shudder 1 You might have been compromised for life!" Vere's proud mouth grew very scornful, but she made no reply Her mother looked at her and saw the scorn. "Oh, you don't believe me?" she said irritably; "ask any body! an hour or two alone with a man like that ruins a girl's name for ever. Of course it was morning, and open air, but still Correze is one of those persons a woman can't be seen with, even! " Yere turned her head and looked back at the bright balconies with their hanging flowers; then she said with her teeth shut and her lips turning white— " I do not speak to you of Prince Zouroflf s character. Will you be so good as not to speak to me of that of M. de Correze." Her mother was startled and subdued. She wished she had not woke the sleeping dog. MOTHS. K If she be like that at sixteen what will she be at six and twenty ? " she thought. " She puts them in opposition already I " Nevertheless, she never again felt safe, and whenever she drove along the Avenue Marigny she looked up at the house with the gilded balconies and hanging flowers to make sure that it gave no sign of life. It did not occur to her that whatever Yere might be at1 six and twenty would be the result of her own teaching, actions, and example. Lady Dolly had reasoned with herself that she had done right after all; she had secured a magnificent position for her daughter, was it not the first duty of a mother ? If Yere could not he content with that position, and all its compensations, if she offended heaven and the world by any obsti« nate passions or imprudent guilt, if she, in a word, with virtue made so easy and so gilded, should not after all be virtuous, it would he the fault of Bulmer, the fault of society, the fault of Zouroff, the fault of Correze, or of some other man, perhaps,—never the fault of her mother. When gardeners plant and graft, they know very well what will be the issue of their work; they do not expect the rose from a bulb Of garlic, or look for the fragrant olive from a slip of briar; but the culturers of human nature are less wise, and they sow poison, yet rave in reproaches when it breeds and brings forth its like." " The rosebud garden of girls " is a favourite theme for poets, and the maiden, in her likeness to a half-opened blossom, is as near purity and sweetness as a human creature can he, yet what does the world do with its opening buds ?—it thrusts them in the forcing house amidst the ordure, and then, if they perish prematurely, never blames itself. The streets absorb the gills of the poor; society absorbs the daughters of the rich; and not seldom one form of prostitution, like the other, keeps its captives "bound in the dungeon of their own corruption." CHAPTER X. It was snowing in Yienna. Snow lay heavy on all the plains and roads around, and the Danube was freezing fast. "It will be barely colder in Moscow," said Correze, with a sniver, as he threw his furs about him and left the opera-house amidst the frantic cheers and adoring outcries of the crowd without, after his last appearance in Romeo e Giulietta. In the bitter glittering frosty night a rain of hothouse flowers fell about him ; he hated to see them fall; but his worshippers did not know that, and would not have heeded it if they had. Roses and violets, hyacinth and white lilac, dropped at his feet, lined his path and 118 MOTES. carpeted Mb carriage as if it were April in the south, instead ol November in Austria. His hand had just been pressed by an emperor's, a ring of brilliants beyond price had just been slid on his finger by an empress; the haughtiest aristocracy of the world had caressed him and flattered him and courted him; he was at the supreme height of fame, and influence, and fashion, and genius ; yet, as he felt the roses and the lilies fall about him he said restlessly to himself— " When I am old and nobody heeds me, I shall look back to this night, and such nights as this, as to a lost heaven; why, in heaven's name, cannot I enjoy it now ? " But enjoyment is not to be gained by reflecting that to enjoy is our duty, and neither the diamonds nor the roses did he care for, nor did he care for the cheers of the multitude that stood out under the chill brilliant skies for the chance of seeing him pass down the streets. It is a rare and splendid royalty, too, that of a great singer; but he did not care for its crowns. The roses made him think of a little hedge-rose gathered by a sweetbriar bush on a cliff by a grey quiet sea. With such odd caprices does Fate often smite genius. He drove to the supper-table of a very great lady, beautiful as the morning ; and he was the idol of the festivity which was in his honour; and the sweet eyes of its mistress told him that no audacity on his part would be deemed presumption—yet it all left him careless and almost cold. She had learned Juliet's part by heart, but he had forgotten Borneo's—had left it behind him in the opera-house with his old Venetian velvets and lace. From that great lady's, whom he left alone with a chill heart, empty and aching, he went with his comrades to the ball of the Elysium down in the subterranean vaults of the city, where again and again in many winters he had found contagion in the elastic mirth and the buoyant spirit of the clean-limbed, bright-eyed children of the populace, dancing and whirling and leaping far down under the streets to the Styrian music. But it did not amuse him this night; nor did the dancers tempt him; the whirl and the glow and the noise and the mirth seemed to him tedious and stupid, "Decidedly that opera tires me," he said to himself, and thought that his weariness came from slaying Tybalt and himself on the boards of the great theatre. He told his friends and adorers with petulance to let him be still, he wanted to sleep, and the dawn was very cold. He went home to his gorgeous rooms in a gorgeous hotel, and lit his cigar and felt tired. The chambers were strewn with bouquets, wreaths, presents, notes; and amidst the litter was a great gold vase, a fresh gift from the emperor, with its two rttievi, telling the two stories of Orpheus and of Amphion. But Correze did not look twice at it. He looked instead at a French journal, which he had thrown on his chair when his servant MOTHS. 119 had roused him at seven that evening, saying that it was the houi to drive to the theatre. He had crushed the paper in his hand then and thrown it down; he took it up now, and looked again in a corner of it in which there was announced the approaching marriage of Prince Zouroff. ° " To give her to that brute!" he murmured as he read it over once more. "Mothers were better and kinder in the days of Moloch!" Then he crushed the journal up again, and flung it into the wood-fire burning in the gilded tower of the stove. It was not slaying Tybalt that had tired him that night. " "What is the child to me ? " he said to himself as he threw himself on his bed. "She never could have been anything, and yet " Yet the scent of the hothouse bouquets and the forced flowers seemed sickly to him; he remembered the smell of the little rose plucked from the sweetbriar hedge on the cliff above the sea. The following noon he left Vienna for Moscow, where he had an engagement for twenty nights previous to his engagement at St. Petersburg for the first weeks of the Russian New Year. From Moscow he wrote to Lady Dolly. When that letter reached Lady Dolly it made her cry; it gave her a crise des ner/s. When she read what he wrote she turned pale and shuddered a little; but she burnt what he wrote; that was all. She shivered a little whenever she thought of the letter for days and weeks afterwards ; but it changed her purpose in no way, and she never for one moment thought of acting upon it. " I shall not answer him," she said to herself. " He will think I have never had it, and I shall send him a /aire part like anybody else. He will say nothing when the marriage is over. Absurd as it is, Correze is a gentleman; I suppose that comes from his living so much amongst us." Amongst the many gifts that were sent to swell the magnifi- cence of the Zouroff bridal, there was one that came anonymously, and of which none knew the donor. It gave rise to many con- jectures and much comment, for there was not even the name of the jeweller that had made it. It was an opal necklace of exquisite workmanship and great value, and, as its medallion, there hung a single rose diamond cut as a star ; beneath the star was a moth ol sapphire and pearls, and beneath the moth was a flame of rubies. They were so hung that the moth now touched the star, now sank to the flame. It needed no words with it for Vere to know whence it came. But she kept silence. " A strange jewel," said Prince Zouroff, and his face grew dark : he thought some meaning or some memory came with it. It was the only gift amidst them all that felt the kisses and tears of Vera. 120 MOTHS. " I must sink to the flame! " she thought, " and he will never know that the fault is not mine; he will never know that I have not forgotten the star!" But she only wept in secret. All her life henceforth was to be one of silence and repression. They are the sepolte vive in which society immures its martyrs. Some grow to like their prison walls, and to prefer them to light and freedom: others loathe them in anguish till death come. The gift of that strange medallion annoyed Z our off, because it perplexed him. He never spoke to Yere concerning it, for he believed that no woman ever told the truth ; but he tried to dis- cover the donor by means of his many servants and agents. He failed, not because Correze had iaken any especial means to ensure secresy, but from simple accideut. Correze had bought the stones himself of a Persian merchant many years before, had drawn the design himself, and had given it to a young worker in gems of Galicia whom he had once befriended at the fair of Novgorod ; and the work was only complete in all its beauty and sent to him when the Galician died of that terrible form of typhus which is like a plague in Russia. Therefore ZourofFs inquiries in Paris were all futile, and he gradually ceased to think about the jewel. Another thing came to her at that time that hurt her, as the knife hurt Iphigenia. It was when the crabbed clear handwriting she knew so well brought her from Bulmer Chase a bitter letter. " You are your mother's child, I see," wrote the harsh old woman, who had yet loved her so tenderly. " You are foolish, and fickle, and vain, and won over to the world, like her. You have nothing of my dead boy in you, or you would not sell yourself to the first rich man that asks. Do not write to me; do not expect to hear from me; you are for me as if you had never lived; and if, in your miserable marriage, you ever come to lose name and fame —as you may do, for loveless marriages are an affront to heaven, and mostly end in further sin—remember that you ask nothing at my hands. At your cry I was ready to open my hand to you and my heart, but I will never do so now, let you want it as you may. I pity you, and I despise you; for when you give yourself to a man whom you cannot honour or love, you are no better than the shameless women that a few weeks ago I would no more have named to you than I would have struck you a buffet on your cheek." Yere read the letter with the hot brazen glow of the Paris sun streaming through the rose silk of the blinds upon her, and each word stood out before her as if it were on fire, and her cheek grew scarlet as if a blow were struck on it. " She is right! Oh, how right!" she thought, in a sort of agony. " And I cannot tell her the truth ! I must never tell her t£e truth! " Sin and shams and all the horror of base passions had been MOTES. 121 things as unintelligible to her, as unknown, as the vile, miserable, frail women that a few roods off her in this city were raving and yelling in the wards of Ste. Pelagie. And now, all in a moment, they seemed to have entered her life, to swarm about her, to become part and parcel of her—and from no fault of hers. "0 mother, spare me! Let me take back my word!" she cried, unconsciously, as she started to her feet with a stab of awful pain in her heart that frightened her; it felt like death. But in the rose-bright room all around her was silence. Her grandmother's letter lay at her feet, and a ray of the sun jhone on the words that compared her to the hapless creatures whose very shame she even yet did not comprehend. The door unclosed and Lady Dolly came in; very voluble, in- different to suffering or humiliation, not believing, indeed, that she ever caused either. Living with her daughter, and finding that no reproach or re- crimination escaped Yere against her, Lady Dolly had begun to grow herself again. She was at times very nervous with Yere, and never, if she could help it, met her eyes, but she was successful, she was contented, she was triumphant, and the sense of shame that haunted her was thrust far into the background. All the vulgar triumphs of the alliance were sweet to her, and she did her best to forget its heavy cost. Women of her calibre soon forgot; the only effort they have ever to make is, on the contrary, to re- member. Lady Dolly had earnestly tried to forget, and had almost thoroughly succeeded. She came now into the room, a pretty pearl grey figure; fresh from lengthened and close council with famous tailors. " Yera, my sweet Yera, your sables are come; such sables! Nobody's except the grand-duchesses' will equal them. And he has sent bags of turquoises with them, literally sacks, as if they were oats or green peas! You will have all your toilette things set with them, and your inkstands, and all that, won't you ? And they are very pretty, you know, set flat, very thick, in broad bands; very broad bands for the waist and the throat; but myself, I prefer Who's been writing to you ? Oh, the old woman from Bulmer. I suppose she is very angry, and writes a great deal of nonsense. She was always horrid. The only thing she gave me when I married poor Yere was a black Bible. I wonder what she will send to you ? Another black Bible, perhaps. I believe she gets Bibles cheap because she subscribes to the men that go out to read Leviticus and Deuteronomy to the negro babies!" Yere bent and raised the letter in silence. The burning colour had gone from her cheeks; she tore the letter up into many small pieces and let them float out into the golden dust of the sunlight of Paris. Her word had been given, and she was its slave. She looked at her mother, whom she had never called mother since that last night at the chateau of Abbaye aux Bois. 122 MOTHS. " Will you, if you please, spare me all those details ?" she said, simply. " Arrange everything as you like best, it will satisfy me. But let me hear nothing about it. That is alL" " You strange, dear creature! Any other girl " began Lady Dolly, with a smile that was distorted, and eyes that looked away. "I am not as other girls are. I hope there is no other girl in all the world like me." Her mother made no answer. Through the stillness of the chambers there came the sounds of Paris, the vague, confused, loud munnur of traffic and music, and pleasure and pain: the sounds of the world, the world to which Vere was sold. The words of the old recluse of Bulmer were very severe, but they were very true, and it was because of their truth that they seared the delicate nerves of the girl like a hot iron. She did not well know what shame was, but she felt that her own marriage was shame; and as she rolled home from the Bois de Boulogne that night through the bright streets of Paris, past the Hotel Zouroff that was to be her prison-house, she looked at the girls of the populace who were hurrying homeward from their workshops— flower-makers, glove-makers, clear-starchers, teachers of children, workers in factories—and she envied them, and followed them in fancy to their humble homes, and thought to herself: " How happy I would be to work, tf only I had a mother that loved me, a mother that was honest and good I" The very touch of her mother's hand, the very sound of her laugh, and sight of her smile, hurt her; she had known nothing about the follies and vices of the world, until suddenly, in one moment, she had seen them all incarnated in her mother, whose pretty graces and gaieties became terrible to her for ever, as the pink and white loveliness of a woman becomes to the eyes that have seen in its veiled breast a cancer. Vere had seen the moral cancer. And she could not forget it, never could she forget it. " When she was once beloved by my father—— 1" she thought; and she let her Bible lie unopened, lest, turning its leaves, she should see the old divine imprecations, the old bitter laws that were in it against such women as this woman, her mother, was. One day in November her betrothed husband arrived from Russia. The magnificence of his gifts to her was the theme ol Paris. The girl was passive and silent always. When he kissed her hands only she trembled from head to foot. " Are you afraid of me ? " he murmured. " No; I am not afraid." She could not tell him that she felt disgust—disgust so great, so terrible, that she could have sprung fc om the balcony and dashed herself to death upon the stonea MOTES. 123 "Cannot yon say that you like me ever so little now?" he persisted, thinking that all his generosity might have borne some fruit. * • " No—I cannot." He laughed grimly and bitterly. " And yet I dare take.you, even as you are, you beautiful cold child!" " I eannot tell you a falsehood." "Will you never tell'me one? " "No; never." " I do not believe you; every woman lies." Yere did not answer in words, but her eyes shone for a moment with a scorn so noble that Sergius Zouroff bent his head before her. "I beg your pardon," he said ; " I think you will not lie. But then, you are not a maiden only; you are a young saint." Yere stood aloof from him. The sunshine shone on her fair head and the long, straight folds of her white dress; her hands wer^ clasped in front of her, and the sadness in her face gave it greater gravity and beauty. " I am a beast to hold her to her word!" he thought; but the beast in him was stronger than aught else and conquered him, and made him ruthless to her. She was looking away from him into the blue sky. She was thinking of the words, " keep yourself unspotted from the world." She was thinking that she would be always true to this man whom she loathed ; always true; that was his right. " And perhaps God will let me die soon," she thought, with her childish fancy that God was near and Death an angel. Serge Zouroff looked at her, hesitated, bowed low, and left the room. " I am not fit for her ; no fitter than the sewer of the street for a pearl! " he thought, and he felt ashamed. Yet he went to his usual companions and ipent the night in drink and play, and saw the sun rise with hot red eyes ; he could not change because she was a saint. Only a generation or two back his forefathers had bought beau- tiful Persian women by heaping up the scales of barter with strings of pearls and sequins, and had borne off Circassian slaves in forays with simple payment of a lance left in the lifeless breasts of the men who had owned them : his wooing was of the same rude sort. Only being a man of the world, and his ravishing being legalised by society, he went to the great shops of Paris for his gems, and employed" great notaries to write down the terms of barter. The shrinking coldness, the undisguised aversion of his be- trothed, only whetted his passion to quicker ardour, as the shrieks of the Circassian captives, or the quivering limbs of the Persian slaves, had done that of his forefathers in Ukraine; and besides, 124 M0TE8. after all, he thought, she had chosen to give herself, hating him, for sake of what he was and of all he could give. After ail, her mother could not have driven her so far unless ambition had made her in a manner malleable. Zouroff, in whose mind all women were alike, had almost been brought to believe in the honesty and steadfastness of the girl to whom he had given Loris, and he was at times disposed to be bitterly enraged against her because she had fallen in his sight by her abrupt submission; she seemed at heart no better than the rest. She abhorred him; yet she accepted him. No mere obe- dience could account for that acceptance without some weakness or some cupidity of nature. It hardened him against her; it spoilt her lovely, pure childhood in his eyes ; it made her shudder from him seem half hypocrisy. After all, he said to himself, where was she so very much higher than Casse-une-Croute ? It was only the price that was altered. When she came to know what Casse-une-Croute was, she said the same thing to herself. " Do you believe in wicked people, miladi ? " he said the next evening to Lady Dolly, as they sat together in a box at the Bouffes. " Wicked people ? Oh dear, no—at least—yes," said Lady Dolly vaguely. "Yes, I suppose I do. I am afraid one must. One sees dreadful things in the papers; in society everybody is very much like everybody else—no ? " Zouroff laughed; the little, short, hard laugh that was charac- teristic of him. " I think one need not go to the papers. I think you and I are both doing evil enough to satisfy the devil—if a devil there be. But, if you do not mind it, I need not." Lady Dolly was startled, then smiled. " What droll things you say ! And do not talk so of the . It doesn't sound well. It's an old-fashioned belief, I know, and not probable, they say, now, but still—one never can tell " And Lady Dolly, quite satisfied with herself, laughed her last laugh at' the fun of the Belle Eelene, and had her cloak folded round her, and went out on the arm of her future son-in-law. Such few great ladies as were already in Paris, passing through from the channel coast to the Riviera, or from one chateau to another, all envied her, she knew; and if anybody had ever said anything that was—that was not quite nice—nobody could say anything now when in another fortnight her daughter would be Princess Zouroff. " Really, I never fancied at all I was clever, but I begin to think that I am," she said in her self-complacency to herself. The idea that she could be wicked seemed quite preposterous to her when she thought it over. " Harmless little me ! " she said to herself. True, she had felt wicked when she had met her daughter's MOTHS. 125 eye, but that was nonsense; the qualm had always gone away when she had taken her champagne at dinner or her ether in her bedroom. A fortnight later the marriage of the head of the house of Zouroff was solemnised at the chapel of the English Embassy and the Russian church in Paris. Nothing was forgotten that eould add to the splendour and pomp of the long ceremonies and sacraments; all that was greatest in the great world was assembled in honour of the event. The gifts were magnificent, and the extravagance unbridled. The story of the corbeille read like a milliner's dream of heaven; the jewels given by the bridegroom were estimated at a money value of millions of roubles, and with them were given the title-deeds of a French estate called Felicite, a free gift of love above and outside all the superb donations contained in the settlements. All these things and many more were set forth at length in all the journals of society, and the marriage was one of the great events of the closing year. The only details that the papers did not chronicle were that when the mother, with her tender eyes moist with tears, kissed her daughter, the daughter put her aside without an answering caress, and that when the last words of the sacrament were spoken, she, who had now become the Princess Zouroff, fell forward on the altar in a dead swoon, from which for some time she could not be awakened. " So they have thrown an English maiden to our Tartar minotaur 1 Oh, what chaste people they are, those English!" said a Russian Colonel of the Guard to Correze, as their sledge flew over the snow on the Newski Prospect. Correze gave a shudder of disgust; he said nothing. Critics in music at the opera-house that night declared then, and long after, that for the first time in all his career he was guilty of more than one artistic error as he sang in the great part of John of Leyden. When the opera was over, and he sat at a supper, in a room filled with hothouse flowers and lovely ladies, while the breath froze on the beards of the sentinels on guard in the white still night without, Correze heard little of the laughter, saw little of the beauty round him. He was thinking all the while— " The heaviest sorrow of my life will always be, not to have saved that child from mother " 128 MOTHS. CHAPTER XL Between the Gulf of Villafranca and that of Eza there was a white shining sunlit house, with gardens that were in the dreariest month of the year rich and red with roses, golden with orange fruit, and made stately by palms of long growth, through whose stems the blue sea shone. To these gardens there was a long terrace of white marble stretching along the edge of the cliff, with the waves beating far down below; to the terrace there were marble seats and marble steps, and copies of.the Loves and Fauns of the Vatican and of the Capitol, with the glow of geraniums flamelike about their feet. Up and down the length of this stately place a woman moved with a step that was slow and weary, and yet very restless; the step of a thing that is chained. The woman was very young, and very pale; her skirts of olive velvet swept the white stone; her fair hair was coiled loosely with a golden arrow run through it; round her throat there were strings of pearls, the jewels of morn- ing. All women envied her the riches of which those pearls were emblem. She was Vera, Princess Zouroff. • Vera always, now. She moved up and down, up and down, fatiguing herself, and unconscious of fatigue; the sunny world was quiet about her; the greyhound paced beside her, keeping step with hers. She was alone, and there was no one to look upon her face and see its pain, its weariness, its disgust. Only a week ago, she thought; only a week since she had fallen in a swoon at the altar of the Russian church; only a week since she had been the girl Vere Herbert. Only a week!—and it seemed to her that thousands of years had come and gone, parting her Vr ages from that old sweet season of ignorance, of innocence, of peace, of youth. She was only sixteen still, but she was no more young. Her girlhood had been killed in her as a spring blossom is crushed by a rough hot hand that, meaning to caress it, kills it. A great disgust filled her, and seemed to suffocate her with its loathing and its shame. Everything else in her seemed dead, except that one bitter sense of intolerable revulsion. All the re- volted pride in her was like a living thing buried under a weight of sand, and speechless, but aghast and burning. " How could she ? how could she ? " she thought every hour of the day; and the crime of her mother against her seemed the vilest the earth could hold. She herself had not known what she had done when she had consented to give herself in marriage, but her mother had known. She did not reason now. She only felt. An unutterable depression and repugnance weighed on her always; she felt ashamed of the sun when it rose, of her own eyes when they MOTES. 127 looked at her from the mirror. To herself she seemed fallen so low, sunk to such deep degradation, that the basest of creatures would have had full right to strike her cheek, and spit in her face, and call her sister. Poets in all time have poured out their pity on the woman who wakes to a loveless dishonour: what can the few words of a priest, or the envy of a world, do to lighten that shame to sacrificed inno- cence ?—nothing. Her life had changed as suddenly as a flower changes when the hot sirocco blows over it, and fills it with sand instead of dew. Nothing could help her. Nothing could undo what had been done. Nothing could make her ever more the clear-eyed, fair-souled child that had not even known the meaning of any shame. " God himself could not help me !" she thought with a bitter- ness of resignation that was more hopeless than that of the martyrs of old; and she paced up and down the marble road of the terrace, wondering how long her life would last like this. All the magnificence that surrounded her was hateful; all the gifts that were heaped on her were like insult; all the congratula- tions that were poured out on her were like the mockeries of apes, like the crackling of dead leaves. In her own sight, and without sin of her own, she had become vile. And it was only a week ago ! Society would have laughed. Society had set its seal of approval upon this union, and upon all such unions, and so deemed them sanctified. Year after year, one on another, the pretty, rosy, golden-curled daughters of fair mothers were carefully tended and cultured and reared up to grace the proud races from which they sprang, and were brought out into the great world in their first bloom like half-opened roses, with no other end or aim set before them as the one ambition of their lives than to make such a marriage as this. Whosoever achieved such was blessed. Pollution ? Prostitution ? Society would have closed its ears to such words, knowing nothing of such things, not choosing to know anything. Shame ? What shame could there be when he was her husband ? Strange fanciful exaggeration!—society would have stared and smiled. The grim old woman who studied her Bible on the iron-bound Northumbrian shores; the frivolous, dreamy, fantastic singer, who had played the part of Romeo till all life seemed to him a rose' garden, moonlit and made for serenades; these two might perhaps think with her, and understand this intense revolt, this passionate repugnance, this ceaseless sense of unendurable, indelible reproach. But those were all. Society would have given her no sympathy. Society would have simpered and sneered. To many well; that was the first duty of a woman, 128 MOTHS. She had fulfilled it; she had been fortunate; how could sh< fail to be content ? A heavy step trod the marble terrace, and a heavy shadow fell across the sunlight; her husband approached her. " You are out without any shade; you will spoil your skin," he said, as his eyes fell gloomily on her, for he noticed the shudder that passed over her as he drew near. She moved without speaking, where no sun fell, where the arm- less Cupid of the Vatican, copied in marble, stood amongst the roses of a hundred leaves. " How pale you are! That gown is too heavy for you. Do you like this place ? " "I?" She said the word with an unconscious sound in it, that had the wonder of despair ; despair which asked what was there left in all the world to like or love ? "Do you like it, I say?" he repeated. "Most women rave about it. You seem as if it were a prison-house. Will you be always like that ? " "The place is beautiful," she said in a low tone. "Have I complained ? " " No; you never complain. That is what annoys me. If you ever fretted like other women—but you are as mute as that marble armless thing. Sometimes you make me afraid—afraid—that I shall forget myself, and strike you." She was silent. "Would that you did strike sooner than embrace me!" she thought; and he read the unuttered thought in her eyes. " I do love you," he said sullenly, with some emotion. " You must know that; I have left no means untried to show it you." " You have been very generous, monsieur!" "Monsieur! always monsieur!—it is ridiculous. I am your husband, and you must give me some tenderer word than that. After all, why cannot you be happy ? You have all you want or wish for, and if you have a wish still unfulfilled, be it the maddest or most impossible, it shall be gratified if gold can do it, for I love you—you frozen child!" He bent his lips to hers; she shuddered, and was still. He kept his hand about her throat, and gathered one of the roses of a hundred leaves, and set it against the pearls and her white skin; then he flung it away into the sea roughjy. "Roses do not become you; you are not a telle jardiniere; you are a statue. This place is dull, one tires of it; we will go to Russia." " As you please." " As I please! Will you say nothing else all your life ? There Is no pleasure in doing what one pleases unless there is some opposition to the doing it. If you would say you hated snow and MOTES. 129 Ice, now, I would swear to you that snow and ice were paradise beside these sickly palms and tawdry flowers. Is there nothing you like ? Who sent you that strange necklace of the moth ? " " I do not know." " But you imagine ? " She was silent. " What is the meaning of it ? " " I think the meaning is that one may rise to great ends, or sink to base ones." " Has it no love-token, then; no message ? " " No." The red colour rose over her pale face, but she looked at him with unflinching gaze. He was but half satisfied. " And do you mean to rise or sink ?" he said, in a tone of banter. " Pray tell me." " I have sunk." The words stung him, and his pride, which was arrogant and vain, smarted under them. " By God!" he said with his short hard laugh. " Did it never occur to you, my beautiful Vera, that you would do wiser not to insult me if you want to enjoy your life ? I am your master, and I can be a bad master." She looked at him without flinching, very coldly, very wearily. " Why will you ask me questions ? The truth displeases you, and I will not tell you other than the truth. I meant no insult— unless it were to insult myself." He was silent. He walked to and fro awhile, pulling the roses from their stems and flinging them into the gulf below. Then he spoke abruptly, changing the subject. "We will go to Russia. You shall see a ball in the Salle des Palmiers. The world is best. Solitude is sweet for lovers, but not when one of them is a statue—or an angel. Besides, that sort of thing never lasts a week. The world is best. You would make me hate you—or adore you—if we stayed on alone, and I wish to do neither. If you were not my wife it might be worth while; but a 6 it is " He threw another rose into the sea, as if in a metaphor of in- difference. "Come to breakfast," he said carelessly. "We will leave for Russia to-night." As they passed down the terrace and entered the house, she moved wearily beside him with her face averted and her lips very pale. The Salle des Palmiers had no charm for her. She was think- ing of the nightingale that was then singing in the Russian snows. If she saw Correze what could she say ? The truth she could not tell him, and he must be left to think the moth had dropped into the earthly fires of venal ambitions and of base desires. K 130 MOTES. i " Could you not leave me here ? " she said wistfully and a little timidly as she sat at the breakfast-table. He answered with his curt and caustic laugh. " I thank you for the compliment! No, my dear, one does not go through all the weariness and folly of marriage ceremonies to leave the loveliness one has purchased so hardly in a week! Have patience! I shall be tired of you soon, maybe. But not until you have shown your diamonds at an Imperial ball. Do not get too pale. The court will rally me upon my tyranny. You are too pale. A touch of your mother's rouge will be advisable unless you get some colour of your own." Vere was silent. Her throat seemed to contract and choke her. She set her glass down untouched. This was her master!—this man who would tire of her soon, and bade her rouge whilst she was yet sixteen years old! Yet his tyranny was less horrible to her than his tenderness. That night they left for Russia. A few days later the gossip of St. Petersburg, in court and cafe, talked only of two things—the approaching arrival of the new beauty, Princess Zouroff, with the opening of the long-closed Zourofif Palace on the Newski Prospect; and of the immense penalty paid in forfeit by the great tenor, Correze, to escape the last twenty nights o his engagement in thai city " I had better forfeit half my engagement than lose my voice altogether," said Correze impatiently, in explanation. "The thousands of francs I can soon make again; but if the mechanical nightingale in my throat give way—I must go and break stones for my bread. No! in this atmosphere I can breathe no longer. I pay—and I go to the south." He paid and went; and St. Petersburg was half consoled for his departure by the entry on the following day of Prince Zourofif, and of her whom all the world called now, and would call henceforward, Princess Vera, CHAPTER XII. Again in the month of November, exactly one year after her marriage, a tall slender figure clothed in white, with white furs, moved to and fro very wearily under the palms of the Villa Nelaguine on the Gulf of Villafranca, and her sister-in-law, looking wistfully at her, thought— " I hope he is not cruel—I hope not. Perhaps it is only the death of the child that has saddened her." Vere read her thoughts and looked her in the eyes. MOTES. 183 "I am glad that the child died," she said simply. The Princess Nelaguine shuddered a little. " Oh, my dear," she murmured, " that cannot be. Do not say that; women find solace in their children when they are unhappy in all else. You have a tender fond heart, you would have " " I think my heart is a stone," said the girl in a low voice; then she added: " In the poem of ' Aurora Leigh' the woman loves the child that is horn of her ruin; I am not like that. Per- haps I am wicked; can you understand ? " "Yes, yes; I understand," said the Princess Nelaguine hurriedly, and, though she was accounted in her generation a false and heartless little woman of the world, her eyes became dim and her hands pressed Yere's with a genuine pity. Long, long years before Nadine Zouroff had herself been given to a loveless marriage, when all her life seemed to her to be lying dead in a soldier's un- marked grave in the mountains of Caucasus. "That feeling will change, though, be assured," she said soothingly. " When we are very young all our sorrow is despair: but it does not kill us, and we live to be consoled. Once I felt like you—yes—but now I have many interests, many ties, many occupations, and my sons and daughters are dear to me, though they were not his; so will be yours, to you, in time." Vere shuddered. " People are different, she said simply; " to me it will always be the same." She pulled a cluster of white roses, and ruffled them in her hands, and threw them down, almost cruelly. " Will those roses bloom again ? " she said. " What I did to them your brother has done to me. It cannot be altered now. Forget that I have said anything ; I will not again." One year had gone by since Yere had been given, with the blessing of her mother and the benison of society, to the Minotaur of a loveless marriage. To herself she seemed so utterly changed that nothing of her old self was left in her, body or soul. To the world she only seemed to have grown lovelier, as was natural with maturer womanhood, and to have become a great lady in lieu of a graceful child. She was little more than seventeen now, but, herself, she felt as if centuries had rolled over her head. After her winter at the Imperial Court, she had been so changed that she would at times wonder if she had ever been the glad and thoughtful child who had watched the North Sea break itself in foam in the red twilight of Northumbrian dawns. She had a horror of herself. She had a horror of the world. But from the world and from herself there was now no escape. She was the Princess Zouroff. An immense disgust possessed her, and pervaded all her life; 132 MOTHS. falling on her as the thick grey fog falls on a sunny landscape— heavy, dull, and nauseous. The loveliest and youngest beauty in the Salle des Palmiers, with the stars of her diamonds shining on her like the planets of a summer night, she was the saddest of all earthly creatures. The girl who had gone to bed with the sun and risen with it; who had spent her tranquil days in study and open-air exercise; who had thought it pleasure enough to find the first primrose, and triumph enough to write the three letters at the foot of a hard problem; who had gone by her grandmother's side to the old dusky church, where noble and simple had knelt together for a thousand years, and who had known no more of the evil and lasciviousness of the world at large than the white ox-eye opening under the oak glades ; the girl who had been Vere Herbert on those dark chill Northumbrian shores was now the Princess Vera, and was for ever in the glare, the unrest, the fever, and the splendour, of a great society. Night was turned into day; pleasure, as the world construed it, filled each hour; life became a spectacle ; and she, as a part of the spectacle, was ceaselessly adorned, arrayed, flattered, censured, and posea—as a model is posed for the painter. All around her was grand, gorgeous, restless, and insincere; there was no leisure, though there was endless ennui; and no time for reflection, though there were monotony and a satiety of sensation. Sin she heard of for the first time, and it was smiled at; vice became bare to her, but no one shunned it; the rapacity of an ignoble passion let loose and called " marriage " tore down all her childish ignorance and threw it to the winds, destroyed her self-respect and laughed at her, trampled on all her modest shame, and ridiculed her innocence. In early autumn she had given birth to a son, who had lived a few hours, and then died. She had not sorrowed for its loss—it was the child of Sergius Zouroff. She thought it better dead. She had felt a strange emotion as she had looked on its little body, lying lifeless; but it was neither maternal love nor maternal regret; it was rather remorse. She had been then at Svir, on the shores of the Baltic, one of the chief estates of the Princes of Zouroff, which all the summer long had been the scene of festivities, barbaric in their pomp and costliness ; festivities with which her husband strove to while away the year which Imperial command had bade him pass, after mar- riage, on his hereditary lands. " Do not allow my mother to come to me!" she had said once with a passionate cry when the birth of the child had drawn near. It was the first time she had ever appealed in any way to her husband. He laughed a little grimly, and his face flushed. " Your mother shall not come," he said hastily. " Do you suppose she would wish to be shut up in a sick room ? Perhaps she might, though, it is true; miladi always remembers what will MOTHS. 133 look well. One most do her the justice to say she always re- members that, at least. But no ; she shall not come." So it came to pass that her mother in her little octagon boudoir in Chesham Place, lined with old fans of the Beau Siecle, and draped with Spanish lace, could only weep a little with her bosom friends, and murmur, " My sweet child !—such a trial!—in this horrible weather by the Baltic—so cruel of the Emperor—and to think my health will not let me go to her!" Zouroff, who passionately desired a legitimate son, because he hated with a deadly hatred his next brother Yladimir, took the loss of the male child to heart with a bitterness which was only wounded pride and baffled enmity, but looked like tenderness beside the marble-like coldness and passive indifference of his wife. Physicians, who always are too clever not to have a thousand reasons for everything, alleged that the change of climate and temperature had affected the health of the Princess Vera ; and her husband, who hated Russia with all his might, urged this plea of her health to obtain a reduction of the time he had been ordered to remain on his own lands; and obtaining what he wished from the Tsar, returned in November to the French Riviera. He had purchased the villa of his sister from her, although it was called still the Villa Nelaguine. He had bought it in a mood of captious irritation with his wife, knowing that to Vere, reared in the cold, grey days and under the cloudy skies, and by the sombre seas of the dark north, the southern seaboard was oppressive in its langour and its light. Sometimes he liked to hurt her in any way he could ; if her child had lived he would have made it into a whip of scorpions for her. Yet he always lavished on her so much money, and so many jewels, and kept her so perpetually in the front of the greatest of great worlds, that everybody who knew him said that he made a good husband after all; much better than any one would have anticipated. He intended to stay at the villa on the Mediterranean for three months, and thither came, self-invited because she was so near— only at Paris—the Lady Dolly. Neither Zouroff nor his sister ever invited her to their houses, but pretty Lady Dolly was not a woman to be deterred by so mere a trifle as that. " I pine to see my sweet treasure!" she wrote; and Sergius Zouroff, knitting his heavy brows, said "Let her come," and Vere said nothing. " What an actress was lost in your mother!" he added with his rough laugh; but he confused the talent of the comedian of society with that of the comedian of the stage, and they are very dissimilar. The latter almost always forgets herself in her part; the former never. So one fine, sunlit, balmy day towards Christmas, Lady Dolly drove up through the myrtle wood that led to the Villa N&aguina. 134 M0TE8. It was noonday. The house guests were straying down from upstairs to breakfast in the pretty Pompeiian room, with its inlaid marble walls, and its fountains, and its sculpture, and its banks of hothouse flowers, which opened on to the white terrace, that fronted the rippling blue sea. On this terrace Zouroff was standing. He saw the carriage approaching in the distance through the myrtles. " O'est madame mere? he said, turning on his heel, and looking into the breakfast chamber. He laughed a little grimly as he said it. Vere was conversing with Madame Nelaguine, who saw a strange look come into her eyes; aversion, repugnance, contempt, pain, and shame all commingled. " What is there that I do not know ?" thought the Princess Nadine. She remembered how Vera had not returned her mother's embrace at the marriage ceremony. Sergius Zouroff was still watching the carriage's approach, with that hard smile upon his face which had all the brutality and cyni- cism of his temper in it, and under which delicate women and courageous men had often winced as under the lash. " G'est madame mere? he said again, with a spray of gardenia between his teeth; and then, being a grand gentleman sometimes, when the eyes of society were on him, though sometimes being rough as a boor, he straightened his loose heavy figure, put the gardenia in his button-hole, and went down the steps, with the dignity of Louis Quatorze going to meet a Queen of Spain, and re- ccived his guest as she alighted with punctilious politeness and an exquisite courtesy. Lady Dolly ascended the steps on his arm. She was dressed perfectly for the occasion ; all a soft dove-hue, with soft dove-coloured feather trimmings, and silvery furs with a knot of black here and there to heighten the chastened effect, and show her grief for the child that had breathed but an hour. On her belt hung many articles, but chief among them was a small silver-bound prayer-book, and she had a large silver cross at her throat. " She will finish with religion," thought Zouroff; " they always take it last." Lady Dolly was seldom startled, and seldom nervous; but, as her daughter came forward on to the terrace to meet her, she was both startled and nervous. Vera was in a white morning dress with a white mantilla of old Spanish lace about her head and throat; she moved with serene and rather languid grace; her form had developed into the richness of womanhood; her face was very cold. Her mother could see nothing left in this wonderfully beautiful and stately person of the child of eighteen months before. "Is that "Vere?" she cried involuntarily, as she looked upward to the terrace above. MOTHS. 135 M That is Vera," said Sergius Zouroff drily. All the difference lay there. Then Lady Dolly recovered herself. " My sweet child! Ah the sorrow!—the joy !" murmured Lady Dolly, meeting her with flying feet and outstretched arms, upon the white and black chequers of the marble terrace. Yere stood passive, and let her cold cheeks be brushed by those softly tinted lips. Her eyes met her mother's once, and Lady Dolly trembled. " Oh this terrible Use I" she cried, with a shiver; " you can have nothing worse in Russia! Ah, my dear, precious Vera! 1 was so shocked, so grieved!—to think that poor little angel was lost to us 1" " We will not speak of that," said Yere in a low voice, that was very cold and weary. " You are standing in the worst of the wind ; will you not come into the house ? Yes; I think one feels the cold more here than in Russia. People say so." " Yes; because one has sunshades here, and one sees those ridiculous palms, and it ought to be warm if it isn't," answered Lady Dolly; but her laugh was nervous and her lips trembled and contracted as she thus met her daughter once more. " She is so unnatural! " she sighed to Princess Nelaguine; " so unnatural! Not a word, even to me, of her poor dear little dead child. Not a word! It is really too painful." The Princess Nelaguine answered drily: " Your daughter is not very happy. My brother is not an angel. But then, you knew very well, chere madame, that he never was one." " I am sure he seems very good," said Lady Dolly piteously, and with fretfulness. She nonestly thought it. Yere had enormous jewels, constant amusement, and a bottom- less purse; the mind of Lady Dolly was honestly impotent to conceive any state of existence more enviable than this. " To think what I am content with! " she thought to herself; she who had to worry her husband every time she wanted a cheque; who had more debts for dress and pretty trifles than she would pay if she lived to be a hundred; and who constantly had to borrow half-a-crown for a cup of tea at Hurlingham, or a rouleau of gold to play with at Monaco. Those were trials indeed! " I hope you realise that you are my mother-in-law," said Zouroff, as Lady Dolly sat on his right hand, and he gave her some grapes at breakfast. He laughed as he said it. Lady Dolly tried to laugh, but did not succeed. " You are bound to detest me," she said with an exaggerated little smile, " by all precedents of fiction and of fact." " Oh no 1" said Zouroff gallantly; " never in fiction or in fact had any man so bewitching and youthful a mother-in-law. On my life, you look no older than Vera." 186 M0TH8. " Oh-h!" said Lady Dolly, pleased but deprecatory. " Vera is in a grand style, you know. Women like her look older than they ire at twenty, but at forty they look much younger than they are. That is the use of height and straight features, and Greek brows. When one is a little doll, like me, one must be resigned to looking insignificant always. "Is the Venus de Medici insignificant? she is very small," said Zouroff still most gallantly; and he added, in a lower key, * You were always pretty, Dolly; you always will be. I am sorry to see that prayer-book ; it looks as if you felt growing old, and you will be wretched if you once get that idea into your head." "I feel young," said Lady Dolly sentimentally. " But it would sound ridiculous to pretend to be so." Her glance went to the graceful and dignified presence of her daughter. " Vere is very handsome, very beautiful," she continued hesitat- ingly. " But—but—surely she is not looking very well ? " "She is scarcely recovered," said Zouroff roughly, and the speech annoyed him. He knew that his young wife was unhappy, but he did not choose for any one to pity her, and for her mother, of all people, to do so ! " Ah! to be sure, no!" sighed Lady Dolly. " It was so sad— poor little angel! But did Vera care much ? I think not." " I think there is nothing she cares for," said Zouroff savagely. " Who could tell your daughter would be a piece of ice, a femme de marbre t It is too droll." " Pray do not call me Dolly," she murmured piteously. " People will hear." " Very well, madame mere J" said Zouroff, and he laughed this time aloud. She was frightened—half at her own work, half at the change wrought in Vere. "Who could tell she would alter so soon?" she thought, in wonder at the cold and proud woman who looked like a statue and moved like a goddess. " To think she is only seventeen! " said Lady Dolly aloud, in bewilderment. " To be married to me is a liberal education," said her son-in- law, with his short sardonic laugh. " I am sure you are very kind to her," murmured poor little Lady Dolly, yet feeling herself turn pale under her false bloom. " The beast!" she said to herself with a shudder. " The Centaurs must have been just like him." She meant the Satyrs. "Sergius," said Princess Nelaguine to her brother that night, " Vera does not look well." " No ? " he answered pa-relessly. " She is always too pale. I MOTES. 137 tell her always to rouge. If she do not rouge in Paris, she will scarcely tell in a ball, handsome though she is." " Rouge at seventeen ! You cannot be serious. She only wants to be—happy. I do not think you make her so. Do you try ? " He stared and yawned. " It is not my metier to make women happy. They can be so if they like. I do not prevent them. She has ten thousand francs a month by her settlements to spend on her caprices—if it is not enough she can have more. You may tell her so. I never refuse money." " You speak like a bourgeois," said his sister, with some contempt. " Do you think that money is everything ? It is nothing to a girl like that. She gives it all to the poor ; it is no pleasure to her." M Then she is very unlike her mother," said the Prince Zouroflf with a smile. " She is unlike her, indeed! you should be thankful to think how entirely unlike. Your honour will be safe with her as long as she lives; but to be happy—she will want more than you give her at present, but the want is not one that money will supply." " She has been complaining ? " said her brother, with a sudden frown. Madame Nelaguine added with a ready lie: " Not a word; not a syllable. But one has eyes—and I do so wish you to be kind to her." " Kind to her ? " he repeated, with some surprise. " I am not unkind that I know of; she has impossible ideas; they make me impatient. She must take me and the world as she finds us ; but I am certainly not unkind. One does not treat one's wife like a saint. Perhaps you can make her comprehend that. Were she sensible, like others, she would be happy like them." He laughed, and rose and drank some absinthe. His sister sighed and set her teeth angrily on the cigarette that she was smoking. " Perhaps she will in time be happy and sensible like them," she said to herself; " and then your lessons will bear their proper fruits, and you will be deceived like other husbands, and punished as you merit. If it were not for the honour of the Zouroffs I should pray for it!" The Villa Ndlaguine was full of people staying there, and was also but five miles distant from Monte Carlo. Vere was never alone with her mother during the time that Lady Dolly graced the Riviera with her presence, carried her red umbrella under the palm-trees, and laid her borrowed napoleons on the colour. No word of reproach, no word of complaint, escaped her lips in her mother's presence, yet Lady Dolly felt vaguely frightened, and longed to escape from her presence, as a prisoner longs to escape from the dock. 138 MOTHS. She stayed this December weather at Villafranca, where Decern', ber meant blue sea, golden sunshine, and red roses, because she thought it was the right thing to do. If there had been people who had said—well, not quite nice things—it was better to stay with her daughter immediately on the return from Russia. So she did stay, and even had herself visited for a day or two by Mr. Van- derdecken on one of his perpetual voyages from London to Java, Japan, or Jupiter. Her visit was politic and useful; but it cost her some pain, some fretfulness, and some apprehension. The house was full of pleasant people, for Zouroff never could endure a day of even comparative solitude; and amidst them was a very handsome Italian noble, who was more agreeable to her than the Due de Dinant had of late grown, and who was about to go to England to be attached to the embassy there, and who had tha eyes of Othello with the manners of Chesterfield, and whom she made her husband cordially invite to Chesham Place. She could play as high as she liked, and she could drive over to Monaco when she pleased, and no life suited her better than this life; where she could, whenever she chose, saunter through the aloes and palms to those magic halls where her favourite fever was always at its height, yet where everything looked so pretty, and appearances were always so well preserved, and she could say to everybody, " They do have such good music—one can't help liking Monte Carlo ! " The place suited her in every way, and yet she felt stifled in it, and afraid. Afraid of what ? There was nothing on earth to be afraid of, she knew that. Yet, when she saw the cold, weary, listless life of Vere and met the deep scorn of her eyes, and realised the absolute impotency of rank, and riches, and pleasure, and all her own adored gods, to console or even to pacify this young wounded soul, Lady Dolly was vaguely frightened, as the frivolous are always frightened at any strength or depth of nature, or any glimpse of sheer despair. Not to be consoled! What can seem more strange to the shallow ? What can seem more obstinate to the weak ? Not to be consoled is to offend all swiftly forgetting humanity, most of whose memories are writ on water. " It is very strange, she seems to one to enjoy nothing! " said Lady Dolly, one morning, to Madame Nelaguine, when Prince Zou- roll had announced at the noonday breakfast that he had purchased for his wife a famous historical diamond known in Memoirs and in European courts as the " Roc's egg," and Vere, with a brief word of thanks acknowledged the tidings, her mother thought indignantly, as though he had brought her a twopenny bunch of primroses. " It is very strange!" repeated Lady Dolly. " The idea of hearing that she had got the biggest diamond in ail the world, except MOTHS. 139 five, and receiving the news like that! Tour brother looked dis- appointed, I think, annoyed,—didn't you ? " "If he want ecstasies over a diamond he can give it tc Noisette," said Madame Nelaguine, with her little cold smile. " I think he ought not to be annoyed that his wife is superior to Noisette." " Was Vera always as cold as that at St. Petersburg before her child's death?" pursued Lady Dolly, who never liked Madame N&aguine's smiles. " Yes; always the same." " Doesn't society amuse her in the least ? " " Not in the least. I quite understand why it does not do so. Without coquetry or ambition it is impossible to enjoy society much. Every pretty woman should be a flirt, every clever woman a poli- tician; the aim, the animus, the intrigue, the rivalry that accompany each of those pursuits are the salt without which the great dinner were tasteless. A good many brainless creatures do, it is true, flutter through society all their lives for the mere pleasure of fluttering ; but that is poor work after all," added Madame Nelaguine, ignoring the pretty flutterer to whom she was speaking. " One needs an aim, just as an angler must have fish in the stream or he grows weary of whipping it. Now your Yera will never be a coquette because her temperament forbids it. She is too proud, and also men have the misfortune not to interest her. And I think she will never be a politician; at least, she is interested in'great questions, but the small means by which men strive to accomplish their aims disgust her, and she will never be a diplomatist. In the first week she was in Eussia she compromised Sergius seriously at the Imperial Court by praising a Nihilist novelist to the Empress!" " Oh, I know ! " said Lady Dolly, desperately. " She has not two grains of sense. She is beautiful and distinguished-looking. When you have said that you have said everything that is to be said. The education she had with her grandmother made her hope- lessly stupid, actually stupid I" " She is very far from stupid, pardon me," said Madame Nela- guine, with a delicate little smile. " But she has not your happy adaptability, chere madame. It is her misfortune." " A misfortune, indeed," said Lady Dolly, a little sharply, feeling that her superiority was being despised. It is always a misfortune to be unnatural,. a*nd she is unnatural. She takes no pleasure in anything that delights every one else; she hardly knows serge from sicilienne; she has no tact because she does not think it worth while to have any. She will offend a king as indifferently as she will change her dress; every kind of amusement bores her, she is made like that. When everybody is laughing round her she looks grave, and stares like an owl with her great eyes. Oh, dear me; to think she should be my daughter! Nothing odder ever could be than that Yera should be my child." 140 M0TE8. " Except that she should be my brother's wife," said Madame Nelaguine, drily. Lady Dolly was silent. The next day Lady Dolly took advantage of her husband's escort to leave the Villa Nelaguine for England; she went with reluctance, yet with relief. She was envious of her daughter, and she was im- patient with her, and, though she told herself again and again that Vere's desti&y had fallen in a golden paradise, the east wind, that she hated, moaning through the palms seemed to send after her homeward a long-drawn despairing sigh—the sigh of a young life ruined. Prince Zouroff stayed on in the south, detained there by the seduction of the gaming-tables, until the Christmas season was passed; then, having won very largely, as very rich men often do, he left the Kiviera for his handsome hotel in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne ; and Madame Nelaguine left it also. Like many of their country people they were true children of Paris, and were seldom thoroughly content unless they were within sight of the dome of the Invalides. He felt he would breathe more freely when from the windows of the railway carriage he should see the zinc roofs and shining gilt cupolas of his one heaven upon earth. " Another year with only her face to look at, with its eyes of unending reproach, and I should have gone mad, or cut her throat," he said in a moment of confidence to one of his confidants and parasites. They had never been alone one day, indeed; troops of guests had always been about them; but it had not been Paris, Paris with its consolations, its charm, and its crowds. In Paris he could forget completely that he had ever married, save when it might please his pride to hear the world tell him that he had the most beautiful woman in Europe for his wife. " Can you not sleep ? do not stare so with your great eyes!" said Prince Zouroff angrily to his wife, as the night train rushed through the heart of France, and Vere gazed out over the snow- whitened moonlit country, as the land and the sky seemed to fly past her. In another carriage behind her was her great jewel box, set between two servants, whose whole duty was to guard it. But she never thought of her jewels; she was thinking of the moth and the star; she was thinking of the summer morning on the white cliff of the sea. For she knew that Correze was in Paris. It was not any sort of love that moved her, beyond such linger- ing charmed fancy as remained from those few hours' fascination. But a great reluctance to see him, a great fear of seeing him, was in her. What could he think of her marriage! And she could never tell him why she had married thus. He would think her sold like the rest, and he must be left to think so. The exnress train rushed on through the cold calm night. With MOTE8. 141 every moment she drew nearer to him—the man who had bidden her keep herself " unspotted from the world." " And what is my life," she thought, " except one long pollu- tion!" She leaned her white cheek and her fair head against the window, and gazed out at the dark flying masses of the clouds; her eyes were full of pain, wide opened, lustrous; and, waking suddenly and seeing her thus opposite him, her husband called to her roughly and irritably with an oath : " Can you not sleep ? " It seemed to her as if she never slept now. What served hei as sleep seemed but a troubled feverish dull trance, disturbed by hateful dreams. It was seven o'clock on the following evening when they arrived in Paris. Their carriage was waiting, and she and Madame Nelaguine drove homeward together, leaving Zouroff to follow them. There was a faint light of an aurora borealis in the sky, and the lamps of the streets wore sparkling in millions; the weather was very cold. Their coachman took his way past the opera-house. There were immense crowds and long lines of equi- pages. In large letters in the strong gaslight it was easy to read upon the placards. Faust . . . CoBRkzs. The opera was about to commence. Yere shrank back into the depths of the carriage. Her com- panion leaned forward and looked out into the night. " Paris is so fickle ; but there is one sovereign she never tires of —it is Correze," said Madame Nelaguine, with a little laugh, and wondered to see the colourless cheek of her young sister-in-law flush suddenly and then grow white again. " Have you ever heard Correze sing ? " she asked quickly. Yere hesitated. "Never in the opera. No." " Ah! to be sure, he left Russia suddenly last winter; left as you entered it," said Madame Nelaguine, musing, and with a quick side-glance. Vere was silent. The carriage rolled on, and passed into the courtyard of the Hotel Zouroff between the gilded iron gates, at the instant when the applause of Paris welcomed upon the stage of its opera its public favourite. The house was grand, gorgeous, brilliant; adorned in the taste af the Second Empire, to which it belonged; glittering and over- laden, superb yet meretricious. The lines of servants were bowing low; the gilded gaseliers were glowing with light, there were masses of camellias and azaleas, beautiful and scentless, and heavy odours of burnt pastilles on the heated air. 142 MOTE8. Vere passed up the wide staircase slowly, and the hues of its scarlet carpeting seemed like fire to her tired eyes. She changed her prison-house often, and each one had been made more splendid than the last, but each in its turn was no less a piison ; and its gilding made it but the more dreary and the more oppressive to her. " You will excuse me, I am tired," she murmured to her sister- in-law, who was to be her guest, and she went into her own bed- chamber and shut herself in, shutting out even her maid from her solitude. Through the curtained windows there came a low muffled sound; the sound of the great night-world of that Paris to which she had come, heralded for her beauty by a thousand tongues. Why could she not be happy ? She dropped on her knees by her bed of white satin, em- broidered with garlanded roses, and let her head fail on her arms, and wept bitterly. In the opera-house the curtain had risen, and the realisation of all he had lost was dawning upon the vision of Faust. The voice of her husband came to her through the door. " Make your toilette rapidly," he said ; " we will dine quickly; there will be time to show yourself at the opera." Vere started and rose to her feet. " I am very tired ; the journey was long." " We will not stay," answered Prince Zouroff. " But you will show yourself. Dress quickly." " Would not another night " Ma chere, do not dispute. I am not used to it." The words were slight, but the accent gave them a cold and hard command, to which she had grown accustomed. She said nothing more, but let her maid enter by an inner door. The tears were wet on her lashes, and her mouth still quivered. The woman saw and pitied her, but with some contempt. " Why do you lament like that ? " the woman thought; " why not amuse yourself ? " Her maids were used to the caprices of Prince Zouroff, which made his wife's toilette a thing which must be accomplished to perfection in almost a moment of time. A very young and lovely woman, also, can be more easily adorned than one who needs a thousand artificial aids. They dressed her very rapidly in white velvet, setting some sapphires and diamonds in her bright hair. " Give me that necklace," she said, pointing to one of the partitions in one of the open jewel cases; it was the necklace of the moth and the star. In ten minutes she descended to dinner. She and her husband were alone. Madame Nelaguine had gone to bed fatigued. He ate little, but drank much, though one of the finest artists of the Paris kitchens had done his best to tempt his taste with the rarest and most delicate combination. MOTHS. 113 " You do not seem to have much appetite," he said, after a little while. " We may as well go. You look very well now." He looked at her narrowly. Fatigue conquered, and emotion subdued, had given an un- usual brilliancy to her eyes, an unusual flush to her cheeks. The white velvet was scarcely whiter than her skin ; about her beautiful throat the moth trembled between the flame and the star. " Have you followed my advice and put some rouge ?" he asked suddenly. Yere answered simply: " No." " Paris will say that you are handsomer than any of the others," he said carelessly. " Let us go." Yere's cheeks flushed more deeply as she rose in obedience. She knew that he was thinking of all the other women whom Paris had associated with his name. She drew about her a cloak of white feathers, and went to her carriage. Her heart was sick, yet it beat fast. She had learned to be quite still, and to show nothing that she felt under all pain; and this emotion was scarcely pain, this sense that so soon the voice of Correze would reach her ear. She was very tired; all the night before she had not slept; the fatigue and feverishness of the long unbroken journey were upon her, making her temples throb, her head swim, her limbs feel light as air. But the excitement of one idea sustained her, and made her pulses quicken with fictitious strength: so soon she would hear the voice of Correze. A vague dread, a sense of apprehension that she could not have explained, were upon her; yet a delighted expectation came over her also, and was sweeter than any feeling that had ever been possible to her since her marriage. As their carriage passed through the streets, her husband smoked a cigarette, and did not speak at all. She was thankful for the silence, though she fancied in it he must hear the loud fast beating of her heart. It was ten o'clock when they reached the opera-house. Her husband gave her his arm, and they passed through the vestibule and passage, and up the staircase to that door which at the com* mencement of the season had been allotted to the name of Prince Zouroff. The house was hushed; the music, which nas all the evsstasy and the mystery of human passion in it, thrilled through the stillness. Her husband took her through the corridor into their box, which was next that which had once been the empress's. The vast circle of light seemed to whirl before her eyes. Yere entered as though she were walking in her sleep, and sat down. On the stage there were standing alone Margherita and Faust. The lights fell full upon the classic profile of Correze, and his 144 MOTHS. eyelids were drooped, as he stood gazing on the maiden who knelt at his feet. The costume he wore showed his graceful form to its greatest advantage, and the melancholy of wistful passion that was expressed on his face at that moment made his beauty of feature more impressive. His voice was silent at that moment when she saw him thus once more, but his attitude was a poem, his face was the face that she had seen by sunlight where the sweetbriar sheltered the thrush. Not for her was he Faust, not for her was he the public idol of Paris. He was the Saint Raphael of the Norman seashore. She sat like one spellbound gazing at the stage. Then Gorreze raised his head, his lips parted, and uttered the Tu vuoi, ahime! Che t' abbandoni. It thrilled through the house, that exquisite and mysterious music of the human voice, seeming to bring with it the echo of a heaven for ever lost. Women, indifferent to all else, would weep when they heard the voice of Correze. Vere's heart stood still; then seemed to leap in her breast as with a throb of new warm life. Unforgotten, unchanged, unlike any other ever heard on earth, this perfect voice fell on her ear again, and held her entranced with its harmony. The ear has its ecstasy as have other senses, and this ecstasy for the moment held in suspense all other emotion, all other memory. She sat quite motionless, leaning her cheek upon her hand. When he sang, she only then seemed herself to live; when his voice ceased, she seemed to lose hold upon existence, and the great world of light around her seemed empty and mute. Many eyes were turning on her, many tongues were whispering of her, but she was unconscious of them. Her husband, glancing at her, thought that no other woman would have been so indifferent to the stare of Paris as she was; he did not know that she was insensible of it; he only saw that she had grown very pale again, and was annoyed, fearing that her entry would not be the brilliant success that he desired it to be. " Perhaps she was too tired to come here," he thought with some impatience. But Paris was looking at her in her white velvet, which was like the snows she had quitted, and was finding her lovely beyond compare, and worthy of the wild rumours of adoration that had come before her from the north. The opera, meanwhile, went on its course; the scenes changed, the third act ended, the curtain fell, the theatre resounded with the polite applause of a cultured city. She seemed to awake as from a dream. The door had opened, and her husband was presenting some great persons to her. MOTES. 145 " You have eclipsed even Correze, Princess," said one of these. " In looking at you, Paris forgot for once to listen to its nightingale It was fortunate for him, since he sung half a note false." " Since you are so tired we will go," said her husband, when the fourth act was over; when a score of great men had bowed themselves in and out of her box, and the glasses of the whole house had been levelled at the Russian beauty, as they termed her. " I am not so very tired now! " she said wistfully. She longed to hear that voice of Faust as she had never longed for anything. " If you are not tired you are capricious, ma chertf said her husband, with a laugh. " I brought you here that they might see you ; they have seen you ; now I am going to the club. Come." He wrapped her white feathery mantle round her, as though it were snow that covered her, and took her away from the theatre as the curtain rose. He left her to go homeward alone, and went himself to the Rue Scribe. She was thankful. " You sang false, Correze!" said mocking voices of women gaily round him in the foyer. He was so eminent, so perfect, so felicitously at the apex of his triumph and of art, that a momentary failure could be made a jest of without fear. " Pardieu!" said Correze, with a shrug of his shoulders. " Par- dieu! do you suppose I did not know it? A fly flew in my throat. I suppose it will be in all the papers to-morrow. That is the sweet side of fame." He shook himself free of his tormentors, and went to his brougham as soon as his dress was changed. It was only one o'clock, and he had all Paris ready to amuse him. But he felt out of tone and out of temper with all Paris; another half-note false and Paris would hiss him—even him. He went home to his house in the Avenue Marigny, and sent his coachman away. " The beast 1" he said to himself, as he entered his chamber; he was thinking of Sergius Zouroff. He threw himself down in an easy chair, and sat alone lost in thought; whilst a score of supper- tables were the duller for his absence, and more than one woman's heart ached, or passion fretted, at it. " Who would have thought the sight of her would have moved me 301" he said to himself in self-scorn. " A false note!—11" 146 MOTE& CHAPTER XIII* In the bitter February weather all aristocratic Paris felt the gayer, because the vast Hotel Zouroff, in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, had its scarlet-clad suisse leaning on his gold-headed staff at its portals, and its tribes of liveried and unliveried lacqueys languishing in its halls and ante-rooms; since these signs showed that the Prince and Princess were en ville, and that the renowned beauty oi the Winter Palace had brought her loveliness and her diamonds to the capital of the world. The Hotel Zouroff, under Nadine Nelaguine, had been always one of those grand foreign houses at which all great people meet; a noble terra nullius in which all political differences were obliterated, and all that was either well born or well received met, and the Empire touched the Faubourg, and the Orleans princes brushed the marshals of the Republic. The Hotel Zouroff had never been very exclusive, but it had always been very brilliant. Under the young Princess, Paris saw that it was likely to be much more exclusive, and perhaps in proportion less entertaining. There was that in the serene simplicity, the proud serious grace of the new mistress of it, which rallied to her the old regime and scared away the new. " You should have been born a hundred years ago," said her husband with some impatience to her. " You would make the house the Hotel Rambouillet." " I do not care for the stories of the ' Figaro,' at my dinner- table, and I do not care to see the romp of the cotillon in my ball- room; but it is your house, it must be ordered as you please," she answered him; and she let Madame Ndlaguine take the reins of social government, and held herself aloof. But though she effaced herself as much as possible, that tall slender proud figure, with the grave colourless face that was so cold and yet so innocent, had an effect that was not to be defined, yet not to be resisted, as she received the guests of the Hotel Zouroff; and the entertainments there, though they gained in simplicity and dignity, lost in entrain. Vere was not suited to her century. Houses take their atmosphere from those who live in them, and even the Hotel Zouroff, despite its traditions and its epoch, despite its excess of magnificence and its follies of expenditure, yet had a fresher and a purer air since the life of its new princess had come into it. " You have married a young saint, and the house feels already like a sacristy," said the Duchesse de Sonnaz to Sergius Zouroff, " fa nous obsede, mon vieux!" That was the feeling of society. She was exquisitely lovely; she had a great distinction, she knew a great deal, and though she spoke seldom, spoke well, MOTES. 147 but she was obsedante; she made them feel as if they were in church. Yet Paris spoke of nothing for the moment but of the Princess Zouroff. Reigning beauties were for the moment all dethroned, and, as Paris had for years talked of his racers, his mistresses, his play, and his vices, so it now talked of Sergius Zouroff's wife. That fair, grave, colourless face, so innocent yet so proud, so childlike yet so thoughtful, with its musing eyes and its arched mouth, became the theme of artists, the adoration of dandies, the despair of women. As a maiden she would have been called lovely, but too cold, and passed over. Married, she had that position which adorns as diamonds adorn, and that charm as of forbidden fruit, which piques the sated palate of mankind. She was the event of the year. Her husband was not surprised either at her fame or her failure. He had foreseen both after the first week of his marriage. " She will be the rage for a season, for her face and her form," he said to himself. " Then they will find her entetee and stupid, and turn to some one else." He honestly thought her stupid. She knew Greek and Latin and all that, but of the things that make a woman brilliant she knew nothing. Life seemed to Yere noisy, tedious, glaring, beyond conception; she seemed, to herself, always to be en scene; always to be being dressed and being undressed for some fresh spectacle; always to be surrounded with flatterers, and to be destitute of friends, never to be alone. It seemed to her wonderful that people who could rule their own lives chose incessant fatigue and called it pleasure. She understood it in nothing. That her mother, after twenty years of it, could yet pursue this life with excitement and preference seemed to her so strange that it made her shudder. There was not an hour for thought, scarcely a moment for prayer. She was very young, and she rose early while the world was still sleeping, and tried so to gain some little time for her old habits, her old tastes, her old studies, but it was very difficult; she seemed to grow dizzy, tired, useless. " It was what I was sold to be," she used to think bitterly. Her husband was fastidious as to her appearance, and inexorable as to her perpetual display of herself; for the rest he said nothing to her, unless it were to sharply reprove her for some oblivion of some trifle in etiquette, some unconscious transgression of the innumer- able unwritten laws of society. In the midst of the most brilliant circle of Europe, Vers was as lonely as any captured bird. She would have been glad of a friend, but she was shy and proud'; women were envious of her, and men were afraid of her. She was not like her world or her time. She was beautiful, but no one would ever have dreamed of classing her with " the beauties" made by princely praise and public por- traiture. She was as unlike them as the beauty of perfect statuary is unlike the Lilith and the Vivienne of modern painting. 148 MOTES. Sometimes her husband was proud of that, sometimes he was annoyed at it. Soon he felt neither pride nor annoyance, but grew indifferent. Society noticed that she seldom smiled. When a smile did come upon her face, it was as cold as the moonbeam that flits bright and brief across a landscape on a cloudy night. Very close observers saw that it was not coldness, but a melancholy too pro- found for her years, that had robbed the light from her thoughtful eyes; but close observers in society are not numerous, and her world in general believed her incapable of any emotion, or any sen- timent, save that of a great pride. They did not know that in the stead of any pride what weighed on her night aud day was the bitterness of humiliation—humilia- tion they would never have understood—with which no one would have sympathised ; a shame that made her say to herself, when she went to her tribune at Chantilly, to see her husband's horses run, " My place should be apart there, with those lost women; what am 1 better than they ? " All the horror of the sin of the world had fallen suddenly on her ignorance and innocence as an avalanche may fall on a young chamois; the knowledge of it oppressed her, and made a great disgust stay always with her as her hourly burden. She despised herself, and there is no shame more bitter to endure. " You are unreasonable, my child," said her sister-in-law, who, - in a cold way, was attached to her, and did pity her. " Any other woman as young as yourself would be happy. My brother is not your ideal. No; that was not to be expected or hoped for; but he leaves you your own way; he is not a tyrant, he lets you enjoy yourself as you may please to do; he never controls your purse or your caprice. Believe me, my love, that, as the world goes, this is as nearly happiness as can be found in marriage—to have plenty of money and to be let alone. You want happiness, I know, but I doubt very much if happiness is really existent anywhere on earth, unless you can get it out of social success and the discomfiture of rivals, as most fortunate women do. I think you are unreasonable. You are not offended ? No ? " " Perhaps I am unreasonable," assented Yere. She never spoke of herself. Her lips had been shut on the day ihat she had accepted the hand of Sergius Zouroflf, and she kept them closed. She would have seemed unreasonable to every one, as to Prin- cess Nelaguine, had she done so. Why could she not be happy ? With youth, a lovely face and form, the great world her own, and her riches boundless, why could she not be happy, or, at the least, amused and flattered ? Amusement and flattery console most women, but thsy had MOTES. 149 failed as yet to console her. By example or by precept every one about her made her feel that they should do so. Upon the danger of the teaching neither her husband nor society ever refl jcted. Young lives are tossed upon the stream of the worl 1, like rose- leaves on a fast-running river, and the rose-leaves are bUmed if the river be too strong and too swift for them, and they p irish. It is the fault of the rose-leaves. When she thought that this life must endure all her life, she felt a despair that numbed her, as frost kills a flower. To the very young, life looks so long. To Sergius Zouroff innocence was nothing more than the virgin bloom of a slave had been to his father—a thing to be destroyed for an owner's diversion. It amused him to lower her, morally and physically, and he cast all the naked truths of human vices before her shrinking mind, as he made her body tremble at his touch. It was a diver- sion, whilst the effect was novel. Like many another man, he never asked himself how the fidelity and the chastity that he still expected to have preserved for him, would survive his own work of destruction. He never remembered that as you sow so you may reap. Nor if he had remembered would he have cared. Toutefemme triche was engraved on his conviction as a certain doctrine. The purity and the simplicity, and the serious sense of right and wrong that he discovered in Yere bewildered him, and half-awed, half- irritated him. But that these would last after contact with the world, he never for a moment believed, and he quickly ceased to regard or to respect them. He knew very well that his wife and his belles petites were crea- tures so dissimilar that it seemed scarcely possible that the same laws of nature had created and sustained them, the same humanity claimed them. He knew that they were as unlike as the dove and the snake, as the rose and the nightshade, but he treated them both the same. There was a woman who was seen on the Bois who drove with white Spanish mules hung about with Spanish trappings, and had a little mulatto boy behind her dressed in scarlet. This eccentric person was speedily celebrated in Paris. She was handsome in a very dark, full-lipped, almond-eyed, mulattress fashion; she got the name of Casse-une-Croute, and no one ever heard or cared whether she ever had had any other. Casse-une-Croute, who was a mustang from over the seas, had made her debut modestly with a banker, but she had soon blazed into that splendour in which bankers, unless they are Rothschilds, are despised. Prince Zouroff had seen the white mules, and been struck with them. Casse-une- Crofite had an apotheosis. There was an actress who was called Noisette; she was very handsome, too, in a red and white way, like Rubens's women; she too drove herself, but drove a mail-phaeton and very high-stepping 150 M0TH8. English horses; she drank only Burgundy, but plenty of it; she had a hotel entre cour et jardin ; on the stage she was very vulgar, but she had du chien and wonderful drolleries of expression. Prince Zouroff did not care even to look at her, but she was the fashion, and he nad taken her away from his most intimate friend ; so, foi years, he let her eat his roubles as a mouse eats rice, and never could prevail on his vanity to break with her, lest men should think she had broken with him. In that unexplainable, instinctive way in which women of quick perceptions come to know things that no one ever tells them, and which is never definitely put before them in words, Princess Zouroff became gradually aware that Noisette and Casse-une-Croute were both the property of her husband. The white mules or the mail phaeton crossed her own carriage-horses a dozen times a week in the Champs Elysees, and she looked away not to see those women, and said in the bitter humiliation of her heart, " What am I better than either of them!" When either of them saw her, Casse-une- Croftte said, " F'Zd la petite! " contemptuously. Noisette said, " Je mangerai meme ses diamants a ells" " Sergius," said Nadine Nelaguine one night," in that wife that you neglect for your creatures you have a pearl of price." " And I am one of the swine, and best live with my kind," said her brother savagely, because he was ashamed of himself, and angered with all his ways of life, yet knew that he would no more change them than will swine change theirs. " You have married a young saint. It is infinitely droll!" said the Duchesse de Sonnaz, who was always called by her society Madame Jeanne, one day to Sergius Zouroff, as he sat with her in her boudoir that was full of chinoiseries, and Indian wares, and Persian potteries. Jeanne de Sonnaz was a woman of thirty-three years old, and had been one of the few really great ladies who had condescended to accept the Second Empire. Born of the splendid Maison de Merilhac, and married to the head of the scarce less ancient Maison de Sonnaz, she belonged, root and branch, to the vieille souche, and her people all went annually to bow the knee at Frohsdorf. But Mdme. Jeanne, wedded at sixteen to a man who was wax in her hands, had no fancy for sacrifice and seclusion for the sake of a shadow and a lily. She was a woman who loved admiration and who loved display. She had condescended to accept the Second Empire, because it was the millennium of these her twin passions. She had known that it would not last, but she had enjoyed it while it did. " Cest un obus qui va s'ecldter," she had always said cheerfully, but meanwhile she had danced on the shell till it ex- ploded, and now danced on its debris. The Duchesse de Sonnaz dressed better than any living being ; was charming, without having a good feature in her face except her eyes, and was admired where Helen or Yenus might have been MOTES. 151 overlooked. She was not very clever, but she was very malicious, which is more successful with society, and very violent, which is more successful with lovers. She had the power of being very agreeable. To the young Princess Zouroff she made herself even unusually so. Yere did not notice that even a polite society could not help a smile when it saw them together. " You have married a young saint; it is very droll," the duchesse now said for the twentieth time to Zouroff. " But do you know that I like her ? Is not that very droll too ? " " It is very fortunate for me," said Zouroff drily, wondering if Bhe were telling him a lie, and, if so, why she told one. She was not lying; though, when she had first heard of his Intended marriage, she had been beside herself with rage, and had even rung violently for them to send her husband to her that she might cry aloud to him, "You never revenge yourself, but you must and you shall revenge me." Fortunately for the peace of Europe her husband was at the club, and by the time he had returned thence she had thought better of it. " What will you do with a saint ? " she continued now. " It is not a thing for you. It must be like that White Swan in ' Lohengrin.'" " She is stupid," said Zouroff; " but she is very honest." " How amusing a combination ! " "I do not see much of her," Zouroff added with an air C: fatigue. " I think she will be always the same. She does net adapt herself. It is a pity her children should not live. She is the sort of woman to be a devoted mother." " Quel beau role 1 and she is not eighteen yet," said Madame de Sonnaz with amusement. "It is what we marry good women for," he said somewhat gloomily. " They never divert one; every one knows that. EUes ne savent pas s'encanailler." Jeanne de Sonnaz laughed again, but her face had an angry irony in it. " Yes: nous nous encanaillons; that is our charm. A beautiful compliment. But it is true. It is the charm of our novels, of our theatres, of our epoch. Le temps nous enfante. Things manage themselves drolly. A man like you gets a young angel; and an honest, stupid, innocent soul like my poor Paul gets—me." Zouroff offered her no compliment and no contradiction; he was sitting gloomily amidst the chinoiseries and porcelains, but their intercourse had long passed the stage at which flattery is needful. He was glad for sake of peace that she was not an enemy of Yere's; but he was annoyed to hear her praise his wife. Why did every one regard the girl as sacrificed ? It offended and annoyed him. She had everything that she could want. Hundreds of women would have asked no more admirable fate than was here. 152 MOTES. " She is of the old type; the old type pure are proud," his friend pursued, unheeding his silence. "We want to see it now and then. She would go grandly to the guillotine, but she will never understand her own times, and she will always have a con- tempt for them. She has dignity; we have not a scrap, we have forgotten what it was like; we go into a passion at the amount of our bills; we play and never pay; we smoke and we wrangle; we have cafe-singers who teach us slang songs ; we laugh loud, much too loud; we intrigue vulgarly, and when we are found out, we scuffle, which is more vulgar still; we inspire nothing unless now and then a bad war or a disastrous speculation; we live showily, noisily, meanly, gaudily. You have said, ' On sait ^encdnailler? Well, your wife is not like us. You should be thankful." " All the same," said Zouroff, with a shrug of his shoulders, " she is not amusing." " Oh, that is another affair. Even if she were, I do not believe you would go to your wife to be amused. I think you are simply discontented with her because she is not somebody else's wife. If she were fast and frivolous you would be angry at that." " She is certainly not fast or frivolous!" " Perhaps, my friend—after all—it is only that she is not happy." It was the one little poison-tipped arrow that she could not help speeding against the man whose marriage had been an insult to a " friendship " of many years' duration. " If she were not a fool she would be perfectly happy," he answered petulantly, and with a frown. " Or if she understood compensations as we understand them," said Mdme. de Sonnaz, lighting a cigarette. " Perhaps she never will understand them. Or, perhaps, on the other hand, some day she will." "Vous plaisantez, madarne" said Sergius Zouroff with a growl, as the duchess laughed. A sullen resentment rose in him against Yere. He had meant to forget her, once married to her. The marriage had been a caprice; he had been moved to a sudden passion that had been heightened by her aversion and her reluctance ; she did as well as another to bear children and grace his name; he had never meant to make a burden of her, and now every one had agreed to speak of her as a martyr to her position. Her position! he thought; what woman in Europe would not have been happy in it ? Yere herself might have fanciful regrets and fantastic senti- ments; that he could admit; she was a child, and had oda thoughts and tastes; but he resented the pity for her—pity for her as being his—that spoke by the cynical lips of his sister and Jeanne de Sonnaz. He began almost to wish that she would be brought to under- MOTES. 153 Btand the necessity de s'encanailler. There are times when the very purity of a woman annoys and oppresses a man—even when she is his wife ; perhaps most of all when she is so. If she had disobeyed him or had any fault against him, he could still have found some pleasure in tyranny over her; but she never rebelled, she never opposed him. Obedience was all she had to give him, and she gave it in all loyalty; her grandmother had reared her in old-world ideas of duty that she found utterly out of place in the day she lived in, yet she clung to them as she clung to her belief in heaven. Her whole nature recoiled from the man to whom she owed obedience, yet she knew obedience was his uue, and she gave it. Although he would have borne with nothing less, yet this passive submission had begun to irritate him ; his commands were caprices, wilful, changeable, and unreasonable. But as they were always obeyed, it ceased to be any amusement to impose them. He began to think that she was merely stupid. He would have believed that she was quite stupid, and nothing else, but for a certain look in her eyes now and then when she spoke, a certain gesture that occasionally escaped her of utter con- tempt and weariness. Then he caught sight for a moment of depths in Vere's nature that, he did not fathom, of possibilities in her character that he did not take into consideration. Had she been any other man's wife, the contradiction would have attracted him, and he would have studied her temper and her tastes. As it was he only felt some irritation, and some ennui because his wife was not like his world. " She is not amusing, and she is not grateful," he would say; and each day he saw less of her and left her to shape her own life as she chose. CHAPTER XIV. In the chilly spring weather Lady Dolly sitting on one chair with her pretty little feet on another chair, was at Hurlingham watching the opening match of the year and saying to her friend Lady Stoat of Stitchley: " Oh, my dear, yes, it is so sad, but you know my sweet child never was quite like other people; never will be, I am afraid. And she never did care for me. It was all that horrid old woman, who brought her up so strangely, and divided entirely from me in every way, and made a perfect Methodist of her, really a Methodist! If Vere were not so exquisitely pretty she would be too ridiculous. As she is so handsome, men don't abuse her so much as they would if she were only just nice-looking. But she is very very odd; and it is so horrible to be odd ? I would really 154 MOTHS. sooner have her ugiy. She is so odd. Never would speak to me even of the birth and death of her baby. Could you believe it ? Not a word! not a word! What would you feel if Gwendalin. . ., Goodness 1 the Duke and Fred have tied. Is it true, Colonel Rochfort? Yes? Thanks. A pencil, one moment; thanks. Ah, you never bet, Adine, do you ? But, really, pigeon-shooting's very stupid if you don't. Talking of bets, Colonel Rochfort, try and get 'two monkeys' for me on Tambour-Battant to-morrow, will you? I've been told a thing about his trainer; it will be quite safe, quite. As I was saying, dear, she never would speak to me about that poor little lost cherub. Was it not sad—terrible? Of course she will have plenty of others; but still, never to sorrow for it at all— so unnatural! Zouroff felt it much more; he has grown very nice, really very nice. Ah 1 that bird has got away; the Lords will lose, I am afraid, after all. Ah, my dear Lesterel, how are you ? What are they saying of my child in your Paris ? " The Marquis de Lesterel, secretary of legation, bowed smiling. " Madame la Princesse has turned the head of ' tout Paris.' It was too cruel of you, madame; had you not already done mischief enough to men that you must distract them with such loveliness in your daughter ? " " All that is charming, and goes for nothing," said Lady Dolly good-humouredly. " I know Yera is handsome, but does she take r Est-ce gu'elle a du charme f That is much more." " But certainly! " rejoined the French marquis with much emphasis; " she is very cold, it is true, which leaves us all lament- ing; and nothing, or very little at least, seems to interest her." " Precisely what I expected!" said Lady Dolly despairingly. " Then she has not du charme. Nobody has who is not amused easily and amused often." " Pardon!" said the marquis. " There is charme and charme. There is that of the easily accessible and of the inaccessible, of the rosebud and of the edelweiss." " Does she make many friends there ? " she continued, pursuing her inquiries, curiosity masked as maternal interest. "Many women-friends, I mean; I am so afraid Vera does not like women much, and there is nothing that looks so unamiable." "It would be impossible to suspect the Princess of un- amiability," said the marquis quickly. " One look at that serene and noble countenance " "Yery nice, very pretty; but Yera can be unamiable," said her mother tartly. " Do tell me, is there any women she takes to at all ? Any one she seems to like much." (" Anybody she is likely to tell about me ? " she was thinking in the apprehension of her heart.) " Madame Nelaguine"—began the young man. " Oh, her sister-in-law!" said Lady Dolly. " Yes, I believe she does like that horrid woman. I always hated Nadine myself— MOTHS. 155 such an ordering sharp creature, and such a tongue i Of course 1 know the Nelaguine is never out of their house; but is there any- body else ? " A little smile ca-me on the face of the Parisian. "The Princess is often with Madame de Sonnaz. Madame Jeanne admires her very much." Lady Dolly stared a minute, and then laughed; and Lady Stoat even smiled discreetly. "I wonder what that is for" murmured Lady Dolly vaguely, and, in a whisper to Lady Stoat, she added, " She must mean mis- chief; she always means mischief; she took his marriage too quietly not to avenge herself." "People forget nowadays; I don't think they revenge," said Lady Stoat consolingly. " When did you see my poor darling last ? " asked Lady Doily aloud. "At three o'clock last night, madame, at the Elysee. She looked like a Greek poet's dream draped by Worth." " How very imaginative!" said Lady Dolly, a little jealously. "How could poor dear Worth dress a dream? That would tax even his powers 1 I hope she goes down to Surennes and chats with him quietly; that is the only way to get him to give his mind to anything really good. But she never cares about that sort of thing; never 1" " The Princess Zouroff knows well," said the Marquis de Lesterel, with some malice and more ardour, " that let her drape herself in what she might, were it sackcloth and ashes, she would be lovelier in it than any other women ever was on earth—except her mother," he added with a chivalrous bow. " What a horrid thing it is to be anybody's mother! and how old it makes one feei—' shunt' it as one may !" thought Lady Dolly as she laughed and answered," You are actually in love with her, marquis 1 Pray remember that I am her mother, and that she has not been married much more than a year. I am very delighted that she does please in Paris. It is her home, really her home. They will go to Petersburg once in ten years, but Paris will see them every year of their lives; Zouroff can be scarcely said to exist out of it. I am so very very sorry the boy died; it just lived to breathe and be baptised, you know; named after the Czar. So sad!—oh, so sad! Who is that shooting now ? Eegy ? Ah-h-h! The bird is inside the palings, isn't it? Oh ! that is superb 1 Just inside!—only just!" And Lady Dolly scribbled again in a tiny betting-book, bound in oxydised silver, that had cost fifty guineas in Bond Street. ^ Lady Dolly was very fond of betting. As she practised it, it was both simple and agreeable. She was always^ paid, and never paid. The ladies who pursue the art on these simplified principles are numerous, and find it profitable. MOTES. When Colonel Rochfort, a handsome young man in the Rifles, tried the next day to get her five hundred " on," at Newmarket, the Ring was prudent; it would take it in his name, not in hers. But the men of her world could not be as prudent—and as rude as the Ring was. Besides, Lady Dorothy Vanderdecken was still a very pretty woman, with charming little tricks of manner and a cultured sagacious coquetry that was hard to resist; and she was very good company too at a little dinner at the Orleans Club, when the nightingales sang, or tete-drtete in her fan-lined octagon boudoir. Lady Dolly did not see much of her daughter. Lady Dolly had taken seriously to London. London had got so much nicer, she said, so much less starchy; so much more amusing; it was quite wonderful how London had improved since polo and pigeon- shooting had opened its mind. Sundays were great fun in London now, and all that old nonsense about being so very particular had quite gone out. London people, the very best of them, always seemed, somehow or other—what should one say?—provincial, after Paris. Yes, provincial; but still London was very nice, and Lady Dorothy Vanderdecken was quite a great person in it; she had always managed so well that nobody ever had talked about her. " It is so horrid to be talked about, you know," she used to say; " and, after all, so silly to get talked about. You can do just as you like if you are only careful to do the right things at the right time and be seen about with the right people. I am always so angry with those stupid women that are compromised; it is quite too dreadfully foolish of them, because, you know, really, nobody need be. People are always nice if one is nice to them." So, from New Year to Midsummer she was in the house in Chesham Place, which she made quite charming with all sorts of old Italian things and the sombre and stately Cinque Cento, effectively, if barbarously, mixed up with all the extravagancies of modern upholstery. Lady Dolly's house, under the combination of millinery and medievalism, was too perfect, everybody said; and she had a new friend in her Sicilian attached to the Italian Legation, who helped her a great deal with his good taste, and sent her things over from his grim old castles in the Taormina; and it was a new toy and amused her; and her fancy-dress frisks, and her musical breakfasts, were great successes; and, on the whole, Lady Dolly had grown very popular. As for Mr. Vanderdecken, he was always stingy and a bear, but he knew how to behave. He repre- sented a remote and peaceable borough, which he had bought as his wife bought a poodle or a piece of pate tendre; he snored decorously on the benches of St. Stephen's, and went to ministerial dinners, and did other duties of a rich man's life; and, for the rest of his time, was absorbed in those foreign speculations and gigantic loans which constituted his business, and took him to Java, or Japan, or Jupiter so often. He was large, ugly, solemn, but he MOTES. 167 did extremely well in his place, which was an unobtrusive one, like the great Japanese bronze who sat cross-legged in the hall. What he thought no one knew; he was as mute on the subject of his opinions as the bronze was. In the new order of fashionable marriage a silence that must never be broken is the part allotted to the husband; and the only part he is expected to take. On the whole Lady Dolly was very contented. Now and then Jura would give her a sombre glance, or Zouroft a grim smile, that recalled a time to her when she had been on the very brink of the precipice, on the very edge of the outer darkness, and the recol- lection made her quite sick for the moment. But the qualm soon passed. She was quite safe now, and she had learned wisdom. She knew how to be " so naughty and so nice" in the way that society in London likes, and never punishes. She had been very silly sometimes, but she was never silly now, and meant to never be silly any more. She tempered roulette with ritualism, and always went to St. Margaret's church in the morning of a Sunday, if she dined down at the Orleans or at old Skindle's in the evening. She had had a great " scare," and the peril and the fright of it had sobered her and shown her the way she should go. For Lady Dolly was always very careful of appearances; she bad no patience with people who were not. " It is such very bad form to make people talk," she would always say; " and it is so easy to stop their mouths." Lady Dolly liked to go to court, to be intimate with the best people, to dine at royal tables, and to " be in the swim," altogether. Everybody knew she was a naughty little woman, but she had never been on the debateable land; she had never been one of the " paniers a quinze sous ; " she had never been coldly looked on by anybody. She never let "Jack," or anybody who preceded or sue- ceeded " Jack," get her into trouble. She liked to go everywhere, and she knew that, if people once begin to talk, you may very soon go nowhere. She was not very wise in anything else, but she was very wise in knowing her own interests. Frightened and sobered, she had said to herself that it was a horrible thing to get any scandal about you; to fall out of society ; to have to content yourself with third- rate drawing-rooms; to have to take your gaieties in obscure conti- nental towns; to reign still, but only reign over a lot of shady dubious declasse people, some with titles and some without, but all " nowhere" in the great race. It was a horrible thing; and she vowed to herself that never, never, never, should it be her fate. So she took seriously to the big house in Chesham Place, and her religion became one of the prettiest trifles in all the town. With her brougham full of hothouse flowers, going to the Children's Hospital, or shutting herself up and wearing black all Holy Week, she was a most edifying study. She maintained some 158 MOTES. orphans at the Princess Mary's pet home, and she was never absent if Stafford House had a new charitable craze. She did not go into extremes, for she had very good taste; but only said very inno- cently, " Oh, all these things are second nature to me, you know; you know my poor Yere was a clergyman." If she did sing naughty little songs after dinner on the lawn at the Orleans; if the Sicilian attache were always rearranging pictures or tapestries in her drawing-rooms; if she did bet and lose and never pay; if she did go to fancy frisks in a few yards of gossamer and her jewels, nobody ever said anything, except that she was such a dear little woman. It is such a sensible thing to "pull yourself together " and be wise in time. Lord Jura, who was leading his old life, with Lady Dolly left out of it, stupidly and joylessly, because he had got into the groove of it, and could not get out, and who had become gloomy, taciturn, and inclined to drink more than was good for him, used to watch the comedy of Lady Dolly's better-ordered life with a cynical savage diversion. When he had come back from his Asiatic hunting tour, which had lasted eighteen months, he had met her as men and women do meet in society, no matter what tragedies divide or hatreds rage in them; but she had seen very well that "Jack" was lost to her for ever. She did not even try to get him back; and when she heard men say that Jura was not the good fellow he used to be, and played too high and drank too deep for the great name he bore, she was pleased, because he had had no earthly right to go off in that rough way, or say the things he had said. " I never see very much of Jura now," she would say to her friends. " He is become so very farouche since that eastern trip; perhaps some woman-—I said so to his dear old father last week— poor Jack is so good and so weak, he is just the man to fall a prey to a bad woman." The ladies to whom she said this laughed a little amongst themselves when they had left her, but they liked her all the better for ridding herself of an old embarrassment so prettily; it formed a very good precedent. Jura of course said nothing, except to hi? very intimate friends who rallied him. To them he said, "Well I went to India, you know, and she didn't like it, and when I camt back she had got the Sicilian fellow with her. So I don't bore her any more; she is a dear little woman ; yes." For honour makes a lie our social life's chief necessity, and Jura, having thus lied for honour's sake, would think of the Princess Zouroff in Paris, and swear round oaths to himself, and go upstairs where they were playing baccarat, and signing fortunes and estates away with the scrawl of a watch-chain's pencil. " I think I could have made her happy if it hadn't been iin- possible," he would think sometimes. "She would always have been miles beyond me, and no man that ever lived would have been good enough for her; but I think I could have made her happy; I MOTES. 159 would have served h&r and followed her like a dog—anyway, I would have been true to her, and kept my life decent and clean; not like that brute's." Then he would curse Sergius Zouroff, as he went home alone down St. James's Street in the grey fog of early morning, sick of pleasure, weary of play, dull with brandy, but not consoled by it • knowing that he might have been a better man, seeing the better ways too late; loathing the senseless routine of his life, but too listless to shake off habit and custom, and find out any different or higher life. He was Earl of Jura; he had a vast inheritance; he had good health and good looks; he was sound in wind and limb; he had a fair share of intelligence, if his mind was slow; in a few years, when he should succeed to his father, he would have a thousand pounds a day as his income. Yet he had got as utterly into a groove that he hated as any ploughman that rises every day to tread the same fields behind the same cattle; and habit made him as powerless to get out of it as his poverty makes the plough- man. " London is the first city in the world, they say," he thought, as he went down St. James's in the mists that made a summer morning cheerless as winter, and as colourless. " Well, it may be, for aught I know; but, damn it all, if I don't think the £:cux in the big swamps, or the hill tribes in the Cashgar passes, are more like men than we are. And we are all so used to it, we never see what fools we are." CHAPTER XY. One morning the young Duke of Mull and Cantire arrived in Paris, where he was seldom seen, and chanced to find his cousin alone in her morning room at the Hotel Zouroff. He was a good-looking young man, with a stupid honest face; he dressed shabbily and roughly, yet always looked like a gentle- man. He had no talents, but, to compensate, he had no vices ; he was very simple, very loyal, and very trustful. He was fond of Yere, and had been dismayed at the marriage so rapidly arranged; but he had seen her at St. Petersburg, and was deceived by her coldness and calm into thinking her consoled by ambition. - " I am about to marry too," he said, with a shamefaced laugh, a little while after his entrance. " I have asked her again and she says ' Yes.' I ran down to Paris to tell you this." Yere looked at him with dismay. "You do not mean Fuschia Leach?" she said quickly. The young duke nodded. lbO MOTES. 44 She's quite too awfully pretty, you know ; a fellow can't help it* " She is pretty, certainly." " Oh, hang it, Yere, that's worse than abusing her. You hate Ver, I can see. Of course I know she isn't our form, but—but—I am very fond of her; dreadfully fond of her; and you will see, in a year or two, how fast she will pick it all up " Yere sat silent. She was deeply angered; her chief fault was pride, an incurable pride of birth with all its prejudices, strong as the prejudices of youth alone can be. " Won't you say something kind? " faltered her cousin. " I cannot pretend what I do not feel," she said coldly. " I think such a marriage a great unworthiness, a great disgrace. This —this—person is not a gentlewoman, and never will be one, and I think that you will repent giving your name to her—if you do ever give it." " I give it most certainly," said the young lover hotly and sullenly; 44 and if you and I are to be friends, dear, in the future, you must welcome her as a friend too." "I shall not ever do that," said Yere simply; but the words, though they were so calm, gave him a chill. "I suppose you will turn the forests into coal-mines now?" she added, after a moment's pause. The young man reddened. "Poor grandmamma!" said Yere wistfully, and her eyes filled with tears. The stern old woman loved her grandchildren well, and had lone her best by them, and all they were fated to bring her in her old age were pain and humiliation. Would the old duchess ever force herself to touch the flower- like cheek of Fuschia Leach with a kiss of greeting? Never, thought Yere; never, never! " When all is said and done," muttered the young duke angrily, " what is the utmost you can bring against my poor love? That she is not our form ? That she doesn't talk in our way, but says 4 cunning' where we say 4 nice' ? Is that a great crime ? She is exquisitely pretty. She is as clever as anything—a prince of the blood might be proud of her. She has a foot for Cinderella's slipper. She never tried to catch me, not she; she sent me about my business twice; laughed at me because I wear such old hats; she's as frank as sunlight! God bless her ! " " I think we will not speak of her," said Yere, coldly. 44 Of course you do as you please. I used to think Herbert of Mull a great name, but perhaps I was mistaken. I was only a child. I am almost glad it has ceased to be mine, since so soon she will own it. Will you not stay to dinner; Monsieur Zouroflf will be most happy to see you ? " 441 will see your husband before I leave Paris," said the young MOTES. 161 man, a little moodily, " and I am very sorry you take it like that, Vere, because you and I were always good friends at old Buhner." " I think you will find every one will take it like that—who cares for you or your honour." " Honour!—Yere, I should be so sorry to quarrel. We won't discuss this thing. It is no use." " No. It is no use." But she sighed as she spoke; it was a link the more added to the heavy chain that she dragged with her now. Every one seemed failing her, and all old faiths seemed changing. He was the head of her family, and she knew his uprightness, his excellence, his stainless honour—and he was about to marry Fuschia Leach. The visit of her cousin brought back to her, poignantly and freshly, the pain of the letter written to her on her own marriage from Bulmer. A great longing for that old innocent life, all dull and sombre though it had been, came on her as she sat in solitude after he had left her, and thought of the dark wet woods, the rough grey seas, the long gallops on forest ponies, the keen force of the north wind beating and bending the gnarled storm-shaven trees. What she would have given to have been Vere Herbert once again! never to have known this weary, gilded, perfumed, deco- rated, restless, and insincere world to which she had been sold 1 " Really I don't know what to say," said Lady Dolly, when, in her turn, she heard the tidings in London. " No, really I don't. Of course you ought to marry money, Frank ; an immensity of money; and most of these Americans have such heaps. It is a very bad marriage for you, very ; and yet she is so very much the fashion, I really don't know what to say. And it will drive your grandmother wild, which will be delightful; and these American women always get on somehow; they have a way of getting on; I dare say she will be Mistress of the Robes some day, and all sorts of things. She is horribly bad form; you don't mind my saying so, because you must see it for yourself. But then it goes down, and it pleases better than any fhing; so, after all, I am not sure that it matters. And, besides, she will change wonderfully when she is Duchess of Mull. All those wild little republicans got, as starchy as possible once they get a European title. They are just like those scatter-brained princes in history, that turn out 6uch stern good-goody sort of despots, when once the crown is on their heads. Really I don't know what to say. I knew quite well she meant to get you when she went to Stagholme this October after you. Oh, you thought it was accident, did you ? How innocent of you, and how nice! You ought to have married more money ; and it is horrible to have a wife who never had a grand- father; but still, I don't know, she will make your place very lively, and she won't let you wear old hats. Yes—yes—you might have done worse. You might have married out of a music-hall oi M 162 MOTHS. a circus. Some of them do. And, after all, Fuschia Leach is a person everybody can know." The young lover did not feel much comforted by this form of congratulation, but it was the best that any of his own family and friends had given him, and Lady Dolly quite meant to be kind. She was rather glad herself that the American would be Duchess of Mull. She had hated all the Herberts for many a long year, and she knew that, one and all, they would sooner have seen the young chief of their race in his grave. Lady Dolly felt that in large things and little, Providence, after treating her very badly, was at last giving her her own way. The young Duke of Mull a month later had his way, and married his brilliant Fuschia in the teeth of the stiffest opposition and blackest anathemas from his family. Not one of them deigned to be present at the ceremony of his sacrifice except his aunt, Lady Dorothy Yan- derdecken, who said to her friends— " I hate the thing quite as much as they all do, hut I can't he ill-natured, and poor Frank feels it so; and, after all, you know, he might have married out of a music-hall or a circu3. So many of them do." People said what a dear little amiable woman she was; so dif- ferent from her daughter; and, on the whole, the marriage, with choral service at the Abbey, and breakfast at a monster hotel where Mrs. Leach had a whole half of the first floor, was a very magnificent affair, and was adorned with great names despite the ominous absence of the Herberts of Mull. " I'm glad that girl put my monkey up about the coal, and made me whistle him back," thought the brilliant Fuschia to herself as the choir sang her epithalamium. " It's a whole suit and all the buttons on; after all, a duchess is always a four-horse concern when she's an English one; and they do think it some pumpkins at home. I'm afraid the money's whittled away a good deal, but we'll dig for that coal before the year's out. Duchess of Mull and Cantire 1 After all it's a big thing, and sounds smart." And the bells, as they rang, seemed to her fancy to ring that and that only all over London. " Duchess of Mull! Duchess of Mull!" It was a raw, dark, rainy day, in the middle of March, as un- pleasant as London weather could possibly be ; but the shining eyes of the lovely Fuschia, and her jewels, and her smiles, seemed to change the sooty, murky, mists to tropic sunshine. "How will you quarter the arms, Frank?" whispered Lady Dolly, as she bade her nephew adieu. " A pig gules with a knifa in its throat, and a bottle argent of pick-me-up?—how nice the new blazonries will look!" But the young duke had no ears for her. Yery uselessly, but very feverishly, the obligation to call Fuschia Leach cousin irritated the Princess Zouroff into an un- ceasing pain and anger. To her own cousin on the marriage she MOTHS. 163 sent a malachite cabinet and some grand jade vases, and there ended her acknowledgment of it. She was offended, and did not conceal it. When the world who had adored Pick-me-up as a maiden, foun' Pick-me-up as Duchess of Mull and Cantire as adorable as anothe. generation had found Georgina Duchess of Devonshire, Vere's proud mouth smiled with ineffable contempt. " What will you, my love?" said Madame Nelaguine. " Shf is frightfully vulgar, but it is a piquante vulgarity. It takes." Yere frowned and her lips set close. " She has made him sink coal shafts in the forest already; qui forest 1" Madame Nelaguine shrugged her shoulders. " It is a pity, for the forests. But we dig for salt; it is cleaner, prettier, but I am not sure that is more princely, salt than coal." " No Herbert of Mull has ever done it," said Vere with darken- ing flashing eyes. " Not one in all the centuries that we have been on the Northumbrian seaboard, for we were there in the days of Otterbourne and Flodden. No man of them would ever do it. Oh, if you had ever seen that forest; and soon now it will be a blackened, smoking, reeking, treeless waste. It is shameful of my cousin Francis." " He is in love still, and does what she tells him. My dear, our sex is divided into two sorts of women—those who always get their own way and those who never get it. Pick-me-up, as they call your cousin's wife in London, is of the fortunate first sort. She is vulgar, ignorant, audacious, uneducated, but she takes, and in her way she is maitresse femme. You have a thousand times more mind, and ten thousand times more character, yet you do not get your own way; you never will get it." " I would have lived on beechmast and acorns from the forest trees sooner than have sunk a shaft under one of them," said Yere unheeding, only thinking of the grand old glades, the deep, still greenery, the mossy haunts of buck and doe, the uplands and the yellow gorze, that were to be delivered over now to the smoke- fiend. " That I quite believe," said her sister-in-law. " But it is just that kind of sentiment in you which will for ever prevent your having influence. You are too lofty ; you do not stoop and see the threads in the dust that guide men." " For thirteen centuries the forest has been untouched," an- swered Yere. It was an outrage that she could not forgive. When she first met the Duchess of Mull after her marriage, Fuschia Leach, translated into Her Grace, said across a drawing- room, " Vera, I am going to dig for that coal. I guess we'll live to make a pile that way." Yere deigned to give no answer, unless a quick angry flush, and the instant turning of ner back on the new 164 MOTES. duchess, could be called one. The young duke sat between them, awed, awkward, and ashamed. " I will never forgive it," his cousin said to him later. " I will never forgive it. She knows no better because she was born so— but you!" He muttered a commonplace about waste of mineral wealth, and felt a poor creature. " 1 think you're quite right to dig," said Lady Dolly in his ear to console him. " Quite right to dig; why not ? I dare say your wife will make your fortune, and I am sure she ought if she can, to compensate for her papa, who helps people to 'liquor up,' and her brothers, who are in the pig-killing trade, pig-killing by machinery; I've seen a picture of it in the papers; the pigs go down a gangway, as we do on to the Channel steamers, and they come up hams and sausages. Won't you have the pig-killers over? They would be quite dans le metier at Hurlingham. Of course she tells you to dig, and you do it. Good husbands always do what they're told." For Lady Dolly detested all the Herberts, and had no mercy whatever on any one of them ; and, in her way, she was a haughty little woman, and though she was shrewd enough to see that in her day aristocracy to be popular must pretend to be democratic, she did not relish any more than any other member of that great family, the connection of its head with the pig-killing brothers down west. Yet, on the whole, she made herself pleasant to the new duchess, discerning that the lovely Fuschia possessed in reserve an immense retaliating power of being " nasty " were she displeased, so that sensible Lady Dolly even went the length of doing what all the rest of the Mull family flatly refused to do—she presented her niece " on her marriage." And Her Grace, who, on her first girlish presentation, when she had first come over " the pickle-field," had confessed herself " flus- tered," was, on this second occasion perfectly equal to it; carrying her feathers as if she had been born with them on her head, and bending her bright cheeks over a bouquet in such a manner that all London dropped at her feet. " If Sam and Saul could see me," thought the American beauty, hiding a grin with her roses; her memory reverting to the big brothers, at that moment standing above a great tank of pigs' blood, counting the " dead 'uns " as they were cast into the caldrons. " It is so very extraordinary. I suppose it is because she is so dreadfully odd," said Lady Dolly of her daughter to Lady Stoat that spring, on her return from spending Easter in Paris. " But when we think she has everything she can possibly wish for, that when she goes down the Bois really nobody else is looked at, that he has actually bought the Boc's egg for her—really, really, it is flying in the face of Providence for her not to be happier than she is. I am sure if at her age I might have spent ten thousand pounds a season MOTES. 166 on my gowns, I should have been in heaven if they had married me to a Cadre." " I never think you did your dear child justice," said Lady Stoat gently. "No, I must say you never did. She is very steadfast, you know, and quite out of the common, and not in the least vulgar. Now, if you won't mind my saying it,—because I am sure you do enjoy yourself, but then you are such a dear, enjouee, good-natured little creature that you accommodate yourself to anything—to enjoy the present generation one must be a little vulgar. I am an old woman, you know, and look on and see things, and the whole note of this thing is vulgar even when it is at its very best. It has been so ever since the Second Empire." " The dear Second Empire; you never were just to it," said Lady Dolly, with the tears almost rising to her eyes at the thought of all she had used to enjoy in it. " It was the apotheosis of the vulgar; of the sort of blague and shamelessness which made De Moray put an Hortensia on his car- riage panels," said Lady Stoat calmly. " To have that sort of epoch in an age is like having skunk fur on your clothes; the taint never goes away, and it even gets on to your lace and your cachemires. I am afraid our grandchildren will smell the Second Empire far away into the twentieth century, and be the worse for it." " I, dare say there will have been a Fourth and a Fifth by then." " Collapsed windbags, I dare say. The richest soil always bears the rankest mushrooms. France is always bearing mushrooms. It is a pity. But what I meant was that your Vere has not got the taint of it at all; I fancy she scarcely cares at all about that famous diamond unless it be for its historical associations. I am quite sure she doesn't enjoy being stared at; and I think she very heartily dislikes having her beauty written about in newspapers, as if she were a mare of Lord Falmouth's or a cow of Lady Pigott's ; she is not Second Empire, that's all." " Then you mean to say I am vulgar! " said Lady Dolly, with some tartness. Lady Stoat smiled, a deprecating smile, that disarmed all suf- ferers, who without it might have resented her honeyed cruelties. " My dear! I never say rude things; but, if you wish me to be sincere, I confess I think everybody is a little vulgar now, except old women like me, who adhered to the Faubourg while you all were dancing and changing your dresses seven times a day at St. Cloud. There is a sort of vulgarity in the air; it is difficult to escape im- bibing it; there is too little reticence, there is too much tearing about; men are not well-mannered, and women are too solicitous to please, and too indifferent how far they stoop in pleasing. It may be the fault of steam ; it may be the fault of smoking; it may come from that flood of new people of whom ' L'Etrangere' is the scarcely exaggerated sample; but, whatever it comes from, 166 M0TH8. there it is—a vulgarity that taints everything, courts and cabinets as well as society. Your daughter somehow or other has escaped it, and so you find her odd, and the world thinks her stiff. She is neither; but no dignified long-descended point-lace, you know, will ever let itself be twisted and twirled into a cascade and a fouillic like your Bretonne lace that is just the fashion of the hour, and worth nothing. I admire your Vera very greatly; she always makes me think of those dear old stately hotels with their grand gardens in which I saw, in my girlhood, the women who, in theirs, had known France before '30. Those hotels and their gardens are gone, most of them, and there are stucco and gilt paint in their places. And there are people who think that a gain. I am not one of them." "My sweetest Adine," said Vere's mother pettishly, "if you admire my child so much, why did you persuade her to marry Sergius Zouroff ? " " To please you, dear," said Lady Stoat with a glance that cowed Lady Dolly. " I thought she would adorn the position; she does adorn it. It is good to see a gentlewoman of the old type in a high place, especially when she is young. When we are older, they don't listen much; they throw against us the laudator temporl actl,—they think we are disappointed or embittered. It is good to see a young woman to whom men still have to bow, as they bow to queens, and before whom they do not dare to talk the langue verte. She ought to have a great deal of influence." "She has none; none whatever. She never will have any," said Lady Dolly, with a sort of triumph, and added, with the sagacity that sometimes shines out in silly people—"You never influence people if you don't like the things they like; you always look what the boys call a prig. Women hate Vere, perfectly hate her, and yet I am quite sure she never did anything to any one of them; for, in her cold way, she is very good-natured. But then she spoils her kind things; the way she does them annoys people. Last winter, while she was at Nice, Olga Zwetchine—you know her, the handsome one, her husband was in the embassy over here some time ago—utterly ruined herself at play, pledged everything she possessed, and was desperate; she had borrowed heaven knows what, and lost it all. She went and told Vera. Vera gave her a heap of money sans se faire prier, and then ran her pen through the Zwetchine's name on her visiting list. Zouroff was furious. ' Let the woman be ruined,' he said, ' what was it to you; but go on receiving her; she is an ex-ambassadress; she will hate you all your life.' Now what do you call that ? " " My friends of the old Faubourg would have done the same," said Lady Stoat, " only they would have done it without giving the money." " I can't imagine why she did give it," said Lady Dolly. " I believe she would give to anybody—to Noisette herself, if the creature were in want." MOTHS. 167 " She probably knows nothing at all about Noisette." " Oh yes, she does. For the Zwetchine, as soon as she had got the money safe, wrote all about that woman to her, and every other horrid thing she could think of too, to show her gratitude, she said. Gratitude is always such an unpleasant quality, you know ; there is always a grudge behind it." " And what did she say, or do about Noisette ? " " Nothing; nothing at all. I should never have heard of it, only she tore the Zwetchine letters up, and her maid collected them and pieced them together, and told my maid; you know what maids are. I never have any confidence from Vera. I should never dare to say a syllable to her." "Very wise of her; very dignified, not to make a scene. So unlike people nowadays, too, when they all seem to think it a positive pleasure to get into the law-courts and newspapers." " No; she didn't do anything. And now I come to think of it," said Lady Dolly, with a sudden inspiration towards truthfulness, " she struck off the Zwetchine's name after that letter, very likely; and I dare say never told Zouroff she had had it, for she is very proud, and very silent, dreadfully so." " She seems to me very sensible," said Lady Stoat. " I wish my Gwendolen were like her. It is all I can do to keep her from rushing to the lawyers about Birk." "Vera is ice," said Lady Dolly. " And how desirable that is; how safe I " said Lady Stoat, with a sigh of envy and self-pity, for her daughter, Lady Birkenhead, gave her trouble despite the perfect education that daughter had received. " Certainly safe, so long as it lasts, but not at all popular," said Lady Dolly, with some impatience. " They call her the Edelweiss in Paris. Of course it means that she is quite inaccessible. If she were inaccessible in the right way, it might be all very well, though the time's gone by for it, and it's always stiff, and nobody is stiff nowadays; still, it might answer if she were only just exclusive and not—not—so very rude all round." " She is never rude; she is cold." " It comes to the same thing," said Lady Dolly, who hated to be contradicted. " Everybody sees that they bore her, and people hate you if they think they bore you; it isn't that they care about you, but they fancy you find them stupid. Now, isn't the most popular woman in all Europe that creature I detest, Fuschia Mull ? Will you tell me anybody so praised, so petted, so sought after, so raved about? Because she's a duchess? Oh, my love, no! You may be a duchess, and you may be a nobody outside your owe county, just as that horrid old cat up at Bulmer has always been. Oh, that has nothing to do with it. She is so popular because everybody delights her, and everything is fun to her. She's as sharp as a needle, but she's as gay as a lark. I hate her, but you 168 MOTHS. can't be dull where she is. You know the Prince always calls hex ' Pick-me-up.' At that fancy fair for the poor Wallacks—whoever the poor Wallacks may be—the whole world was there. Vera had a stall, she loaded it with beautiful things, things much too good, and sat by it, looking like a very grand portrait of Mignard's. She was superb, exquisite, and she had a bower of orchids, and a carved ivory chair from Hindostan. People flocked up by the hundreds, called out about her beauty, and—went away. She looked so still, so tired, so contemptuous. A very little way off was Puschia Mull, selling vile tea and tea-cakes, and twopenny cigarettes. My dear, the whole world surged round that stall as if it were mad. Certainly she had a lovely Louis Treize hat on, and a delicious dress, gold brocade with a violet velvet long waistcoat. Her execrable tea sold for a sovereign a cup, and when she kissed her cigarettes they went for five pounds each! Zouroff went up and told his wife: 'A brioche there fetches more than your Saxe, and your Sevres, and your orchids,' he said. ' You don't tempt the people, you frighten them.' 'hen Vera looked at him with that way—she has such a freezing way—and only said: 'Would you wish me to kiss the orchids?' Zouroff laughed. 'Well, no; you don't do for this thing, I see; you don't know how to make yourself cheap.' Now I think he hit exactly on what I mean. To be liked nowadays you must make yourself cheap. If you want to sell your cigar you must kiss it." " But suppose she has no cigars she wants to sell ? " "You mean she has a great position, and need care for nobody? That is all very well. But if she ever come to grief, see how they will turn and take it out of her!" " 1 never said she was wise not to be polite," pleaded Lady Stoat. "But as to 'coming to grief,' as you say, that is impossible. She will always sit in that ivory chair." " I dare say; but one never knows, and she is odd. If any day she get very angry with Zouroff, she is the sort of temper to go out of his house in her shift, and leave everything behind her." " What a picture! " said Lady Stoat, with a shudder. Nothing appalled Lady Stoat like the idea of any one being wrought upon to do anything violent. She would never admit that there could ever be any reason for it, or excuse. She had been an admirable wife to a bad husband herself, and she could not conceive any woman not considering her position before all such pettier matters as emotions and wrongs. When her daughter, who was of an impetuous disposition, which even the perfect training she had received had not subdued, would come to her in rage and tears because of the drunkenness or because of the open infidelities of the titled Tony Lumpkin that she had wedded, Lady Stoat soothed her, but hardly sympathised. " Lead your own life, my love, and don't worry," she would say. " Nothing can unmake your position, and no one, except yourself." When MOTE8. 160 her daughter passionately protested that position was not all that a woman wanted at twenty years old and with a heart not all trained out of her, Lady Stoat would feel seriously annoyed and injured. " You forget your position," she would reply. " Pray, pray do not jeopardise your position. Let your husband go to music-halls and creatures if he must; it is very sad, certainly, very sad. But it only hurts him; it cannot affect your position." Farther than that the light she possessed could not take her. She would not have been disposed to quarrel with the Princess Zouroff, as her own mother did, for not playing the fool at fancy fairs, but she would have thought it horrible, inexcusable, if, under the pressure of any wrong, the affront of infidelity, she had—in Lady Dolly's figure of speech—left her husband's house in her shift. " Never lose your position," would have been the text that Lady Stoat would have had written in letters of gold, for all young wives to read, and it was the text on which all her sermons were preached. Position was the only thing that, like old wine or oak furniture, improved with years. If you had a good position at twenty, at forty you might be a power in the land. What else would wear like that? Not love, certainly, which indeed at all times Lady Stoat was disposed to regard as a malady; a green sickness, inevi- table, but, to onlookers, very irritating in its delirious nonsense. It was neither mere rank nor mere riches that Lady Stoat con- sidered a great position. It was the combination of both, with a power—inalienable except by your own act—to give the tone to those around you; to exclude all who did not accord with your own notions; to be unattainable, untroubled, unruffled; to be a great example to society ; metaphorically to move through life with carpet always unrolled before your steps. When you had a position that gave you all this, if you had tact and talent enough to avail yourself of it, what could you by any possibility need more ? Yet her own daughter, and her friend's daughter, had this and both were dissatisfied. Her own daughter, to her anguish unspeakable, revolted openly and grew vulgar; even grew vulgar; went on the boxes of the four-in-hand-men's coaches, shot and hunted, played in amateur performances before London audiences far from choice; had even Deen seen at the Crystal Palace; had "loud" costumes with won- derful waistcoats ; and had always a crowd of young men wherever she went. Lady Stoat honestly would sooner have seen her in her grave. The Princess Zouroff, who had the very perfection of manner even if she offended people, who knew of her husband's infidelities and said nothing, went coldly and serenely through the world, taking no pleasure in it perhaps, but giving it no power to breathe a breath against her. " Why was she not my child ! " sighed Lady Stoat sadly. If Lady Stoat could have seen into the soul of Yere, she wouto 170 MOTHS. have found as little there with which she could have sympathised as she found in her own daughter's tastes for the stage, the drag, and the loud waistcoats. She could not imagine the price at which Yere's composure was attained; the cost at which that perfect manner, which she admired, was kept unruffled by a sigh or frown. She could not tell that this young life was one of perpetual suffering, of exhausting effort to keep hold on the old faiths and the old principles of childhood amidst a world which has cast out faith as old-fashioned and foolish, and regards a principle as an affront and an ill-nature. Her own society found the young Princess Vera very cold, unsympathetic, strange; she was chill about fashionable good works, and her grand eyes had a look in them, stern in its sadness, which frightened away both courtiers and enemies. The verdict upon her was that she was unamiable. The world did not understand her. " The poor you have always with you/' had been an injunction that, in the days of her childhood, she had been taught to hold sacred. " The poor you have always with you," she said to a bevy ol freat ladies once. " Christ said so. You profess to follow Christ, low have you the poor with you? The back of their garret, the roof of their hovel, touches the wall of your palace, and the wall is thick. You have dissipations, spectacles, diversions that you call charities; you have a tombola for a famine, you have a dramatic performance for a flood, you have a concert for a fire, you have a fancy fair for a leprosy. Do you never think how horrible it is, that mockery of woe ? Do you ever wonder at revolutions ? Why do you not say honestly that you care nothing? You do care nothing. The poor might forgive the avowal of indifference; they will never forgive the insult of affected pity." Then the ladies who heard were scandalised, and went to their priests and were comforted, and would not have this young saint preach to them as Chrysostom preached to the ladies of Constanti- nople. But Yere had been reared in tender thoughtfulness for the poor. Her grandmother, stern to all others, to the poor was tender. " Put your second frock on for the Queen, if you like," she would say to the child; " but to the poor go in your best clothes or they will feel hurt." Vere never forgot what was meant in that bidding. Charity in various guises is an intruder the poor see often; but courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they are seldom honoured. It is very difficult for a woman who is young and very rich not to be deceived very often, and many an impostor, no doubt, played his tricks upon her. But she was clear-sighted and much in earnest, and found many whose needs were terrible, and whose lives were noble. The poor of Paris are suspicious, resentful, and MOTES. 171 apt to be sullen in their independence; but they are often also serious and intelligent, tender of heart, and gay of spirit. Some 0/ them she grew to care for very much, and many of them forgave her for being an aristocrat, and welcomed her for her loveliness and her sympathy. As for herself, she sometimes felt that the only reality life had for her was when she went up to those damp chill attics in the metal roofs, and spoke with those whose bread was bitterness and whose cup was sorrow. Her husband, with some contempt, told her she grew like Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia, but he did not forbid her doing as she pleased. If she were present to drive in the Bois, or ride there before sunset, and afterwards went to dinner, or ball, or reception, as the engagements of the night might require, he did not exact any more account of her time 01 ask how her mornings were spent. "You leave Yera too much alone, terribly too much," said his sister to him once. He stared, then laughed. "Alone? a woman of her rank is never alone. Not a whit more than queens are!" " I mean you are not with her; you never ask what she does all the day." " I suppose her early hours are given to her tailor and ber milliner, and the later ones to morning visits," he answered with a yawn. " It does not matter what she does. She is a fool in many things, but she will not abuse liberty." For, though he had never believed in any woman, he did believe in his wife. " She will not abuse it yet; no," thought Madame Nelaguine. " No, not yet, whilst she is still under the influence of her childish faiths and her fear of God. But after ?—after five, six, seven years of the world, of this world into which you have cast her without any armour of love to protect her—how will it be then ? It will not be men's fault if she misuse her liberty; and assuredly it will not be women's. We corrupt each other more than men corrupt us." Aloud the Princess Nelaguine merely said, "You allow her to be friends with Jeanne de Sonnaz ? " Zouroff laughed again and frowned. "All women in the same set see one another day and night. Who is to help that ? " " But » "Be reasonable," he said roughly. "How can I say to my wife, ' Do not receive the Buchesse de Sonnaz.' All Paris would be convulsed, and Jeanne herself a demoniac. Good heavens! Where do you get all these new scruples ? Is it your contact with Yera?" " Your contact with her does not teach them to you," said his sister coldly. " Oh, our world is vile enough, that I know well, 172 MOTHS. but somewhere or other I think it might keep a little conscience, tor exceptional circumstances, and so might you." " Do not talk nonsense. I cannot tell Jeanne not to know my wife, or my wife not to know Jeanne. They must take their chance ; there is nothing exceptional; every man does the same." " Yes; we are very indecent," said Madame Nelaguine quietly. " We do not admit it, but we are." Her brother shrugged his shoulders to express at once acquies- cence and indifference. In one of the visits that her charities led his wife to make she she heard one day a thing that touched her deeply. Her horses knocked down a girl of fifteen who was crossing the Avenue du Bois de Bologne. The girl was not hurt, though frightened. She was taken into the Hotel Zouroff, and Vere returned to the house to attend to her. As it proved, the child, when the faintness of her terror had passed, declared herself only a little bruised, smiled and thanked her, and said she would go home; she wanted nothing. She was a freckled, ugly, bright-looking little thing, and was carrying some of those artificial flowers with which so many girls of Paris gain their daily bread. Her name was Felicie Martin, and she was the only child of her father, and her mother was dead. The following day the quiet little coups that took Vere on her morning errands, found its way into a narrow but decent street in the Batignolles, and the Princess Zouroff inquired for the Sieur Martin. Vere bade her men wait below, and went up the stairs to the third floor. The house was neat, and was let to respectable people of the higher class of workers. In her own world she was very proud, but it was not the pride that offends the working classes, because it is dignity and not arrogance, and is simple and natural, thinking nothing of rank though much of race, and far more still of iharacter. " May I come in ?" she said in her clear voice, which hat always so sad an accent in it, but for the poor was never cold. * Will you allow me to make myself quite sure that your daughter is none the worse for that accident, and tell you myself how very sorry I was ? Russian coachmen are always so reckless." " But, madame, it is too much honour!" said a little, fair man who rose on her entrance, but did not move forward. " Forgive me, madame, you are as beautiful as you are good; so I have heard from my child, but alas ! I cannot have the joy to see such sunlight in my room. Madame will pardon me—I am blind." " Blind ? "—the word always strikes a chill to those who hear it; it is not a very rare calamity, but it is the one of all others which most touches bystanders, and is most quickly realised. He was a happy-looking little man, nevertheless, though his blue eyes were without light in them gazing into space unconsciously; the room was clean, and gay, and sweet-smelling, with some pretty vase* M0TH8. 178 and prints and other simple ornaments, and in the casement some geraniums and heliotrope. " Yes, I am blind," he said cheerfully, " Will Madame la Princesse kindly be seated ? My child is at her workshop. She will be so glad and proud. She has talked of nothing but madam© ever since yesterday. Madame's beauty, madame's goodness;—ah yes, the mercy of it! I am always afraid for my child in the streets, but she is not afraid for herself; she is little, but she is brave. It is too much kindness for Madame la Princesse to have come up all this height, but madame is good ; one hears it in her voice. Yes, my child makes flowers for the great Maison Justine. Our angel did that for us. She is my only child, yes. Her dear mother died at her birth. I was fourth clarionet at the Opera Comique at that time." " But you can play still ? " "Ah no, madame. My right arm is paralysed. It was one day in the forest at Vincennes. Felicie was ten years old. I thought to give her a Sunday in the wood. It was in May. We were very happy, she and I running after one another, and pulling the hawthorn when no one looked. All in a moment a great storm came up and burst over us where we were in the midst of the great trees. The lightning struck my eyes and my right shoulder. Ah, the poor, poor child 1 . . . But madame must excuse me; I am tiresome " " It interests me ; go on." " I fell into great misery, madame. That is all. No hospita/ could help me. The sight was gone, and my power to use my right arm was gone too. I could not even play my clarionet in the streets as blind men do. I had saved a little, but not much. Musicians do not save, any more than painters. I had never earned very much either. I grew very very poor. I began to despair. I had to leave my lodging, my pretty little rooms where the child was born and where my wife had died; I went lower and lower, I grew more and more wretched ; a blind, useless man with a little daughter. And I had no friends ; no one ; because, myself, I came from Alsace, and the brother I had there was dead, and our parents too had been dead long, long before; they had been farmers. Madame, I saw no hope at all. I had not a hope on earth, and Felicie was such a little thing she could do nothing. But I fatigu« madam ? " " Indeed no. Pray go on, and tell me how it is that you are so tranquil now." " I am more than tranquil; I am happy, Princess. That is his doing. My old employers all forgot me. They had so much to think of; it was natural. I was nobody. There were hundreds and thousands could play as well as I had ever played. One day when I was standing in the cold, hungry, with my little gir1 hungry too, I heard them saying how the young singer Correze had 174 MOTHS. been engaged at fifty thousand francs a night for the season. I went home and I made the child write a letter to the young man. I told him what had happened to me, and I said, ' You are young and famous, and gold rains on you like dew in midsummer; will you remember that we are very wretched ? If you said a word to my old directors—you—they would think of me.' I sent the letter I had often played in the orchestra when the young man was first turning the heads of all Paris. I knew he was gay and careless ; I had not much hope." " Well ? " Her voice had grown soft and eager; the man was blind, and could not see the flush upon her face. " Well, a day or two went by, and I thought the letter was gone in the dust. Then he came to me, he himself, Correze. I knew hi3 perfect voice as I heard it on the stairs. You can never forget it once you have heard. He had a secretary even then, but he had not left my letter to the secretary. He came like the angel Raphael whose name he bears." Yere's eyes filled; she thought of the white cliffs by the sea, of the sweetbriar hedge, and the song of the thrush. " But I tire madame," said the blind man. " He came like an angel. There is no more to be said. He made believe to get me a pension from the opera, but I have always thought that it is his own money, though he will not own to it; and as my child had a talent for flower-making he had her taught the trade, and got her employed later on by the Maison Justine. He sent me that china, and he sends me those flowers, and he comes sometimes himself. He has sung here—here J—only just to make my darkness lighter. And I am not the only one, madame. There are many, many, many who, if they ever say their prayers, should never forget Correze." Vere was silent, because her voice failed her. "You have heard Correze, madame, of course, many times?" asked the blind man. " Ah, they say he has no religion and is careless as the butterflies are: to me he has been as the angels. I should have been in Bicetre or in my grave but for him." The girl at that moment entered. "Felicie," said the Sieur Martin, "give the Princess a piece of heliotrope. Oh, she has forests of heliotrope in her conservatories, that I am sure, but she will accept it; it is the flower of Correze." Vere took it and put it amidst the old lace at her breast. "You have Felicie Martin amongst your girls, I think?" said Vere to the head of the Maison Justine a little later. The principal of that fashionable house, a handsome and clever woman, assented. " Then let her make some flowers for me," added Vere. " Any flowers will do. Only will you permit me to pay her through you very well for them ; much better for them than they are worth ? " " Madame la Princesse," said the other with a smile, " the little MOTES. 176 Martin cannot make such flowers as you would wear. I employ her, hut I never use her flowers, never. I have to deceive her; it would break her heart if she knew that I burn them all. The poor child is willing, but she is very clutnsy. She cannot help it. Madame will understand it is a secret of my house; a very little harmless secret, like a little mouse. Correze—madame knows whom I mean, the great singer ?—Correze came to me one day with his wonderful smile, and he said,' There is a blind man and he has a little girl who wants to make flowers. Will you have her taught, madame, and allow me to'pay for her lessons ?' I allowed him. Six months afterwards I said, * M. Correze, it is all of no use. The child is clumsy. When once they have fingers like hers it is of no use.' Then he laughed. ' It ought to be difficult to make artificial flowers. I wish it were impossible. It is a blasphemy. But I want to make the girl believe she earns money. Will you employ her, burn the flowers, and draw the money from my account at Rothschild's ?' And I did it to please him and I do it still; poor little clumsy ugly thing that she is, she fancies she works for the Maison Justine ! It is compromising to me. I said so to M. Correze. He laughed and said to me, " Ma chere, when it is a question of a blind man and a child we must even be compromised, which, no doubt, is very terrible.' He is always so gay, M. Correze, and so good. If the child were Yenus he would never take advantage of maintaining her, never, madame. Ah, he is an angel, that beauti- ful Correze. And he can laugh like a boy ; it does one good to hear his laugh. It is so sweet. My poor Justine used to say to me, " Marie, hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.' And it is true, very true ; Madame la Princesse will forgive my garrulity." When she went down to her carriage the world did not seem so dark. There was beauty in it, as there were those flowers blooming in that common street. The little picture of the father and daughter, serene and joyous in their humble chamber, in the midst of the gay, wild, ferocious riot of Paris, seemed like a little root of daisies blooming white amidst a battle-field. That night she went to her box at the Grand Opera, and sat as far in the shadow as she could and listened to Correze in the part ef Gennaro. " He does not forget that blind man," she thought. " Does he ever remember me ? " For she could never tell. From the time she had entered Paris she had longed, yet dreaded, to meet, face to face, Correze. She saw him constantly in the street, in the Bois, in society, but he never approached her; she never once could be even sure that he recognised or remembered her. She heard people say that Correze was more difficult of accesso more disinclined to accept the 170 MOTES. worship of society, than he had been before, but she could not tell what his motive might he ; she could not believe that she had any share in his thoughts. His eyes never once met hers but what they glanced away again rapidly, and without any gleam of recognition. Again and again in those great salons where he was a petted idol, she was close beside him, but she could never tell that he remem- bered her. Perhaps his life was so full, she thought; after all, what was one summer morning that he should cherish its memory ? Often in the conversations that went on around her, she heard his successes, his inconstancies, his passions of the past, slight or great, alluded to, laughed over, or begrudged. Often, also, she heard of other things ; of some great generosity to a rival, some great aid to an aspirant of his art, some magnificent gift to a college made by the famous singer. Or, on the other hand, of some captiousness as of a too spoilt child, some wayward caprice shown to the powers of the State by the powers of genius, some brilliant lavishness of en- tertainment or of fancy. When she heard these things her heart would beat, her colour would change; they hurt her, she could not have told why. Meantime the one solace of her life was to see his genius and its triumphs, its plenitude and its perfect flower. Her box at the Grand Opera was the only one of the privileges of her position which gave her pleasure. Her knowledge of music was deep and had been carefully cultured, and her well-known love for it made her devotion to the opera pass unremarked. Seldom could the many engagements made for her let her hear any one opera from its overture to the close. But few nights passed without her being in her place, sitting as far in the shadow as she could, to hear at least one act or more of " Fidelio," of " Lucia," of the " Prophete," of the " Zauberflote," of "Faust," or of the " II Trovatore." She never knew or guessed that the singer watched for her fair-haired head amidst the crowded house, as a lover watches for the rising of the evening planet that shall light him to his love. She saw him in the distance a dozen times a week, she saw him, not seldom, at the receptions of great houses, but she never was near enough to him to be sure whether he had really forgotten her, or whether he had only affected oblivion. Correze, for his own part, avoided society as much as he could and alleged that to sing twice or three times a week was as much as his strength would allow him to do, if he wished to be honest and give his best to his impresario. But he was too popular, too much missed when absent, and too great a favourite with great ladies to find retirement in the midst of Paris possible. So that, again and again, it was his fortune to see the child he had sung to on the Norman cliffs announced to the titled crowds as Madame la Princesse Zouroff. It always hurt him. On the other hand he was always glad when, half-hidden behind some huge fan or gigantic bouquet, he could see the fair head of Yere in the opera-house. MOTHS. 177 When he sang he sang to her. " How is it you do not know Princess Vera ?" said many of his friends to him; for he never asked to be presented to her. " I think she would not care to know an artist," he would say. " Why should she ? She is at the height of fame and fortune, and charm and beauty; what would she want with the homage of a singing-mime ? She is very exquisite ; but you know I have my pride ; la probite des pauvres, et la grandeur des rois; I never risk a rebuff." And he said it so lightly that his friends believed him, and believed that he had a fit of that reserve which very often made him haughtier and more difficult to persuade than any Roi Soleil of the lyric stage had ever been. " I am very shy," he would say sometimes, and everybody would laugh at him. Yet, in a way, it was true; he had many sensitive fancies, and all in his temperament that was tender, spiritual, and romantic had centred itself in that innocent emotion which had never been love, which was as fantastic as Dante's, and almost as baseless as Keats's, and was therefore all the more dear to him because so unlike the too easy and too material passions which had been his portion in youth. " It can do her no harm," he would think, " and it goes with me like the angel that the poets write of, that keeps the door of the soul. * It was a phantasy, he told himself, but then the natural food of artists was phantasies of all binds; and so this tenderness, this regret, went with him always through the gay motley of his changeful days, as the golden curl of some lost love, or some dead child, may lie next the heart of a man all the while that he laughs and talks, and dines, and drives, and jests, and yawns in the midst of the world. " It can do her no harm," he said, and so he never let his eyes meet hers, and she could never tell whether he ever remembered that Vera Zouroff had once been Vere Herbert. And the weeks and the months rolled on their course, and Correze was always the Roi Soleil of his time, and Vere became yet of greater beauty, as her face and form reached their full per- fection. Her portraits by great painters, her busts by great sculptors, her costumes by great artists, were the themes of the public press; the streets were filled to see her go by in the pleasure- capital of the world; amongst her diamonds the famous jewel of of tragic memories and historic repute that was called the Roc's egg shone on her white breast as if she had plucked a planet from the skies. No day passed but fresh treasures in old jewels, old wares, old gold and silver, from the sales of the Hotel Drouot, were poured into her rooms with all the delicate charm about them that comes from history and tradition. Had she any whim, she could indulge it; any taste, she could gratify it; any fancy, she could b 178 MOTES. execute it; and yet one day when she saw a picture in the Salon of a slave-girl standing with rope-bound wrists and fettered ankles, amidst the lustrous stuffs and gems of the harem, surrounded by the open coffers and glittering stones and chains of gold in which her captors were about to array her nude and trembling limbs, she looked long at it, and said to the master of oriental art who had painted it, " Did you need to go to the East for that ? " She bought the picture, and had it hung in her bedchamber in Paris; where it looked strange and startling against the pink taffe- tas, and the silver embroideries of the wall. " That is not in your usual good taste," said her husband, finding that the painting ill agreed with the decorations of the room. Yere looked at him, and answered : " It suits any one of my rooms." He did not think enough of the matter to understand; the picture hung there amidst the silver Cupids, and the embroidered apple-blossoms of the wall. " A painful picture, a horrible picture, like all Gerome's," said her mother before it once. A very cold smile came on Yere's mouth. " Yes," she said simply, " we have no degradation like that in Europe, have we ? " Lady Dolly coloured, turned away, and asked if Fantin had designed those charming wreaths of apple-blossoms and amorini. But it was very seldom that the bitterness, and scorn, and shame that were in her found any such expression as in the pur- chase of the " Slave for the Harem." She was almost always quite tranquil, and very patient under the heavy burden of her days. All the bitterness and humiliation of her heart she choked down into silence, and she continued to live as she had done hitherto, without sympathy and in an utter mental isolation. She felt that all she had been taught to respect was ridiculous in the eyes of those who surrounded her ; she saw all that she had been accustomed to hold in horror as sin made subject for jest and for intrigue; she saw that all around her, whilst too polite to deride the belief and the principles that guided her, yet regarded them as the cobwebs and chimeras of childhood ; she saw that the women of her world, though they clung to priests, and, in a way, feared an offended heaven—when they recollected it—yet were as absolutely without moral fibre and mental cleanliness as any naked creatures of Pacific isles sacrificing to their obscene gods. All that she saw; but it did not change her. She was faithful, not because his merit claimed it, but because her duty made such faith the only purity left to her. She was loyal, not because his falseness was ever worthy of it, but because her nature would not let her be other than loyal to the meanejt thing that lived. MGTH8. 179 Chastity was to her as honour to the gentleman, as courage to the soldier. It was not a robe embroidered and worn for mere parade, and therefore easy to be lifted in the dark by the first audacious hand that ruffled it. " On se console toujours, we know," her sister-in-law thought, who watched her keenly. " Still, there is an exception now and then to that rule as to any other, and she is one of those excep- tions. It is strange; generally the great world is like aether, or any other dram-drinking; tasted once, it is sought for more and more eagerly every time, and ends in becoming an indispensable intoxication. But nothing intoxicates her, and so nothing consoles her. I believe she does not care in the least for being one of the very few perfectly lovely women in Europe. I believe her beauty is almost distasteful and despicable to her, because it brought about her bondage; and although it is an exaggerated way of looking at such things, she is right; she was bought, quite as barbarously as Gerome's slave. Only were she anybody else she would be recon- ciled by now—or be revenged. The only time I ever see her look iu the least happy is at the opera, and there she seems as if she were dreaming; and once, at Svir, when we were driving over the plains in the snow, and they said the wolves were behind us—then she looked for the moment all brilliancy and courage; one would have said she was willing to feel the wolves' breath on her throat. But in the world she is never like that. What other women find excitement to her is monotony. Pleasure does not please her, vanity does not exist in her, and intrigue does not attract her; some day love will." And then Madame Nelaguine would pull the little curls of her perruque angrily and light her cigar, and sit down to the piano and compose her nerves with Chopin. " As for Sergius, he deserves nothing," she would mutter, as she followed the dreamy intricate melodies of the great master. But then it was not for her to admit that to any one, and much less was it for her to admit it to his wife. Like most great ladies, she thought little of a sin, but she had a keen horror of a scandal, and she was afraid of the future, very afraid of it. " If she were not a pearl what vengeance she would take! " she thought again and again, when the excesses and indecencies of her brother's career reached her ears. For she forgot that she understood those as the one most out- raged by them was very slow to do. Yere still dwelt within the citadel of her own innocence, as within the ivory walls of an enchanted fortress. Little by little the corruption of life flowed in to her and surrounded her like a foetid moat, but, though it approached her it did not touch her, and often she did not even know that it was near. What she did per- ceive filled her with a great disgust, and her husband laughed at 180 MOTES. In these short months of her life in Paris she felt as though she had lived through centuries. Ten years in the old grey solitude of Bulmer would not have aged her morally and mentally as these brief months of the riot of society had done. She had drunk of the cup of knowledge of good and of evil, and, though she had drunk with sinless lips, she could not entirely escape the poison the.cup held. She hated the sin of the world, she hated the sensuality, the intrigue, the folly, the insincerity, the callousness of the life of society, yet the knowledge of it was always with her like a bitter taste in the mouth. It hurt her unceasingly; it aged her like the passing of many years. In the beginning of the time she had tried to get some threads of guidance, some words of counsel, from the man who was her husband, and who knew the world so well. The answers of Sergius Zouroff left her with a heavier heart and a more bitter taste. The chill cynicism, the brutal grossness of his experiences, tore and hurt the delicate fibres of her moral being, as the poisons and the knife of the vivisector tear and burn the sensitive nerves of the living organism that they mutilate. He did not intend to hurt her, but it seemed to him that her ignorance made her ridiculous. He pulled down the veils and mufflers in which the vices of society mask themselves, and was amused to see her shrink from the nude deformity. His rough, bold temper had only one weakness in it: he had a nervous dread of being made to look absurd. He thought the innocence and coldness of Vere made him look so. " They will take me for a raari amoureux," he thought; and Madame de Sonnaz laughed, and told him the same thing fifty times a week. He began to grow impatient of his wife's uncon- sciousness of all that went on around her, and enlightened her without scruple. He sat by her, and laughed at Judic and at Theo, and was angry with her that she looked grave and did not laugh; he threwthe last new sensation in realistic literature on to her table, and bade her read it, or she would look like a fool when others talked. When a royal prince praised her too warmly, and she resented it, he was annoyed with her. " You do not know how to take the world," he said impatiently. " It is myself that you make ridi- culous; I do not aspire to be thought the jealous husband of the theatres, running about with a candle and crying aux voleurs I" When she came to know of the vices of certain great ladies who led the fashion and the world, she asked him if what was said were true. He laughed. " Quite true, and a great deal that is never said, and that is worse, is as true too." MOTES. 181 " And you wish me to know them, to be friends with them ? * she asked in her ignorance. He swore a little, and gave her a contemptuous caress, as to a dog that is importuning. "Know them? Of course; you must always know them. They are the leaders of society. What is their life to you or any- body? It is their husbands' affair. You must be careful as to women's position, but you need not trouble yourself about their character." " Then nothing that any one does, matters ? " He shrugged his shoulders. " It depends on how the world tal es it. You have a proverb in English about the man who may st