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 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 JUL 2 ])8S 
 
 L161— O-1096
 
 MOTHS 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 OUIDA 
 
 ' Like unto moths fretting a garment ' (Psalm) 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES— VOL. L 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1880 
 
 {The right 0/ translation is reserved \
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BV 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET
 
 /)5 7y>*^ 
 
 ' InstribcD 
 
 TO 
 
 MY OLD FRIEND 
 
 ALGERNON BORTHWICK 
 
 IX MEMORY OF THE DAYS OF 
 'PUCK' 
 i^> AND AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF AN 
 
 UNCHANGED REGARD 
 ^ AND ESTEEM
 
 Le monde aime le vice et halt Tamour ; le vice est ua 
 bon enfant, un viveur, un drole, un gourmet ; il tient 
 bonne table, et vous invite souvent ; Tamour, au contraire, 
 est un pedant, un solitaire, un misanthrope, un va-nu- 
 pieds ; il ne vous amuse pas ; vous criez vite, ' a la 
 lanterne ! '— Rivarez.
 
 MOTHS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Lady Dolly ought to have been perfectly 
 happy. She had everything that can constitute 
 the joys of a woman of her epoch. 
 
 She was at Troaville. 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 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 anxious and continuous reflection. Nothing 
 but ha^tiste indeed ! but hajptiste sublimised and 
 apotheosised by niello buttons, old lace, and 
 genius. She bad her adorers and slaves 
 grouped about her. She bad found her dearest 
 friend out in cbeating at cards. She bad dined 
 the night before at the Maison Persanne and 
 would dine this nigbt at the Maison Normande. 
 She had been told a state secret by a minister 
 wbicb she knew it was shameful of him to have 
 been coaxed and cbaffed into revealing. She 
 bad had a new comedy read to her in manu- 
 script-form three montbs before it would be 
 given in Paris, and bad screamed at all its 
 indecencies in the choice company of a Serene 
 Princess and two ambassadresses as they all 
 took tbeir 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
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 sunshades of Europe before lier, like a bed of 
 full-blown anemones. She had floated and 
 bobbed and swum and splashed semi-nude, 
 with all the other mermaids a la mode, and had 
 shown that she must still be a pretty woman, 
 pretty even in daylight, or the men would not 
 have looked at her so : and yet with all this 
 she was not enjoying herself. 
 
 It was very hard. 
 
 The yachts came and went, the sands glit- 
 tered, the music sounded, men and women in 
 bright-coloured stripes took headers into the 
 tide or pulled themselves about in little canoes ; 
 the snowy 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 shoes ; but for all that she 
 was wretched. 
 
 She was thinking to herself, ' What on earth 
 shall I do with her ? ' 
 
 82
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 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 combined 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 appal- 
 ling, 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
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 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 digestible, and never drank any- 
 thing wholesome, that she made her waist 
 fifteen inches round, and destroyed her nerves 
 with gambling, chloral, and many other things ; 
 considering these, and so many other 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 realise 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. Night-
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 fall at Trouville! When Lady Dolly in tlie 
 deftest of summer-evening toilettes would be 
 just opening Iter 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 liked to 
 go out and dance, or stay at home for poker 
 or chemin-de-fer, 
 
 'What in the world shall I do with her, 
 Jack ? ' she sighed to her chief counsellor. 
 
 The chief counsellor opened his lips, an- 
 swered, ' Marry her ! ' then closed them on a 
 big cigar. 
 
 ' Of course ! One always marries girls ; how 
 stupid you are,' said Lady Dolly peevishly. 
 
 The counsellor smiled grimly, 'And then 
 you will be a grandmother,' he said with a cruel 
 relish : he had just paid a bill at a hric-a-hrac 
 shop for her and it had left him unamiable. 
 
 ' I suppose you think that witty,' said Lady 
 Dolly with delicate contempt. ' Well, Helene 
 there is a great-grandmother, and look at her!'
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 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 lains lazuli ring; she had a quantity of fair 
 curls, a broad hat wreathed Avith 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 ^Almanach de 
 Gotha ' said so, and alas ! said her age. 
 
 ' You won't wear so well as Helene. You 
 don't take care of yourself,' the counsellor 
 retorted, with a iKiff 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. ISTot 
 take care of herself! — she! — who had every 
 fashionable medicine that came out^ and, except
 
 'MOTHS. 
 
 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 me 
 a drunkard— — ! ' said Lady Dolly, very hotly 
 flushing up a little. 
 
 ' You smoke quite awfully too much,' pur- 
 sued 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 of my not wearing as well as 
 Hel^ne,' pursued Lady Dolly, unable to forget 
 the insult. ' Well, there are five-and- twenty 
 years between us, thank goodness, and more ! '
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 'I saj you won't,' said tlie 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? 
 I can.' 
 
 ' All the lower animals sleep like toj)s/ 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 everything 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 every- 
 body 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
 
 10 MOTHS. 
 
 laad lovely feet, and could afford to uncover 
 tliem ; 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 miser- 
 able; 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 compensa- 
 tion 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 draw-
 
 MOTHS. 11 
 
 ing-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 lea,st 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, ancf gossips and chuckles so merrily 
 and so lightly over infamy, incest, or anything 
 else that it thinks only fun, and deals with 
 such impudent xDcrsonalities. 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 few unhappy 
 unknowns who had dared to enter the magic 
 precincts of these very dusty sands ; wondered 
 with whom the Prince of Wales would dme 
 that night, and whose that new yawl was, that
 
 12 MOTHS. 
 
 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 impending 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 pic-
 
 MOTHS. 13 
 
 turesque 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 eye-glasses all gazed in the same 
 direction. 
 
 Was it at the Prince ? Was it at the Pre- 
 sident ? 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. Em- 
 perors were common-place; ministers were non- 
 entities; marshals were monotonous; princes 
 were more numerous than the porpoises ; and 
 great dramatists, great singers, great actors, 
 great orators, were all there as the veiy sand-s 
 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.
 
 14 MOTHS. 
 
 ' Who is it ? ' said Trouville, in one breath, 
 and the women laughed, and the men stared, 
 and both sexes turned round by common con- 
 sent. Something lovelier than anything there 
 was coming through them as a sunbeam comes 
 through dust. Yet it wore nothing but brown 
 holland ! Brown hoUand at Trouville maj- be 
 worn indeed, but it is brown holland trans- 
 figured, sublimated, canonised, borne, like Lady 
 Dolly's haptiste, into an apotheosis 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 the root of a good 
 cook's mayonnaise is discernible to the un- 
 educated 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
 
 MOTHS. 15 
 
 bubbles just blown in a thousand hues to float 
 upon the breeze. 
 
 ' Brown holland ! good gracious ! ' said Lady 
 Dollj, 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 patheti- 
 cally, long afterwards. 
 
 * What a guy ! ' said Lady Dolly. 
 ' What a face ! ' said the courtiers ; but 
 they 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
 
 16 MOTHS. 
 
 stood still. Her pretty face was very blank, 
 her rosy small mouth was parted in amaze and 
 disgust. 
 
 ' In that dress ! ' she gasped, when the 
 position became clear 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 
 haptiste 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 sun- 
 shade furiously at all creation ; she could have 
 fainted, only the situation would have been 
 rendered more ridiculous still if she had, and 
 that consciousness sustained her; the sands.
 
 Moths. 17 
 
 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 Olgar- 
 ouski, who 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 have slain her hundreds 
 in that moment, had her sunshade but been of 
 steel. To be made ridiculous ! There is no 
 more disastrous destiny under the sun. 
 
 The brown holland had ceased to cling 
 about her, finding itself repulsed; the Scotch 
 plaid had fallen down on the plank; there 
 were two brilliant and wistful eyes regarding 
 her from above, and one hand still stretched 
 out shyly. 
 
 ' I am Vere ! * said a voice in which tears 
 trembled and held a struggle with pride. 
 
 * I see you are ! ' said Lady Dolly with as- 
 perity. ' What on earth made you come in this — 
 this — indecent way for — without even dressing ! 
 VOL. I.
 
 I a MOTHS. 
 
 I expected you at night. Is that Fraulem 
 Schroder ? She should be ashamed of herself.' 
 
 ' I see no shame, Miladi,' retorted m guttural 
 tones an injured German, ' in that a long- 
 absent and much-loving daughter should be 
 breathless to flee to embrace the one to whom 
 she owes her being ' 
 
 ' Hold your tongue ! ' said Lady Dolly 
 angrily. Fraulein Schroder wore a green veil 
 and blue spectacles, and was not beautiful to 
 the eye, and was grizzle-headed; and the 
 friends and lovers, and courtiers, and enemies, 
 were laughing uncontrollably. 
 
 ' What an angel of loveliness ! But a 
 woman ; quite a woman. She must be twenty 
 at least, my dear ? ' said Princess Helene, who 
 always said the pleasantest thing she could 
 think of at any time. 
 
 ' Yere is sixteen,' said Lady Dolly sharply, 
 much ruffled, seeing angrily that the girl's head 
 in its sunburnt sailor's hat, bound with a black 
 ribbon, was nearly a foot higher than her own, 
 hung down, though it now was, like a rose in 
 the rain.
 
 MOTHS. 19 
 
 There was a person coming up from his 
 mile swim in the sea, with the burnons-like 
 folds cast about him more gracefully than other 
 men were able ever to cast theirs. 
 
 ' How do you manage to get so much 
 grace out of a dozen yards of bath towelling, 
 Correze ? ' asked an Englishman who was with 
 him. 
 
 ' C^est mon metier a moi cVetre ^^oseur,' said 
 the other, paraphrasing the famous saying of 
 Joseph the Second. 
 
 ' Ah, no,' said the Englishman, ' you never 
 do 2)oser ; that is the secret of the charm of 
 the thing. I feel like a fool in these spacliUes 
 and swathings ; but you — you look as if you 
 had just come up from a sacred river of the 
 East, and are worthy to sing strophes to a 
 JSTourmahal.' 
 
 ' Encore unefois — mon metier,' said the other, 
 casting some of the linen folds over his head, 
 which was exceedingly handsome, and almost 
 line for line like the young Sebastian of Del 
 Sarto. At that moment he saw the little scene 
 going on between Lady Dolly and her daughter,
 
 20 Moths. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 and watched it from a distance with much 
 amusement. 
 
 ' What an exquisite face that child has, — 
 that lovely tint like the wild white rose, there 
 is nothing like it. It makes all the women 
 with colour look vulgar,' he said, after a pro- 
 longed gaze through a friend's field- glass. 
 *Who is she do you say? Miladi Dolly's 
 daughter ? Is it possible ? I thought Miladi 
 was made herself yesterday in Giroux's shop, 
 and was kept in a wadded box when her 
 mechanism was not wound up. Surely, it is 
 impossible Dolly can ever have stooped to such 
 homely unartificial thing as maternity. You 
 must be mistaken.' 
 
 ' No. In remote ages she married a cousin. 
 The white wild rose is the result.' 
 
 ' A charming result. A child only, but an 
 exquisite child. It is a pity we are in this 
 costume, or we would go and be presented ; 
 though Miladi would not be grateful, to judge 
 by her face now. Poor little Dolly ! It is hard 
 to have a daughter^ — and a daughter that comes 
 to Trouville in August**
 
 MOTHS. 21 
 
 Then lie who was a figure of grace even in 
 white towelling, and had a face like Saint 
 Sebastian, handed the field-glass back to his 
 friend, and went to his hotel to dress. 
 
 Meanwhile Lady Dolly was saying irrit- 
 ably : ' Go home to my house, Vere, — the 
 Chalet Ludoff. Of course you ought to 
 have gone there first ; why didn't jow go 
 there first and dress ? None but an idiot 
 would ever have allowed you to do it. The 
 idea ! Walk on, pray— and as quickly as you 
 can.' 
 
 ' We went to the house, but they said you 
 were on the beach, and so, mother ' 
 
 '^Pray don't call me mother in that way. 
 It makes one feel like What's-her-name in the 
 " Trovatore," ' said Lady Dolly, with a little 
 laugh, that was very fretful. ' And be kind 
 enough not to stand here and stare ; everybody 
 is listening.' 
 
 'What for should they not listen?' said 
 Fraulein Schroder stoutly. 'Can there be in 
 nature a sweeter, more soul-inspiring, and of- 
 heaven-al ways-blessed-emotion than the out-
 
 22 MOTHS. 
 
 coming of filial love and the spontaneous flow 
 of ' 
 
 'Enbbisli! ' said Lady Dolly. 'Vere, oblige 
 me by walking in ; I shall be with you in a 
 moment at the house. You'll find Jack there. 
 You remember Jack ? ' 
 
 ^ What an angel ! anyone would give her 
 twenty years at least,' said Princess Helene 
 again. ' But your German^ in her blue glasses, 
 she is a drSlesse ' 
 
 ' A very clever woman ; dreadfully blue and 
 conscientious, and all that is intolerable; the 
 old duchess found her for me,' replied Lady 
 Dolly, still half willing to faint, and half 
 inclined to cry, and wholly in that state of 
 irritation which Fuseli was wont to say made 
 swearing delicious. 
 
 ' I always fancied — so stupid of me ! — that 
 your Yere was quite a little child, always at the 
 Sacre Coeur,' continued the Princess musingly, 
 with her sweetest «mile. 
 
 ' I wish to heaven we had a Sacre Coeur,' 
 said Lady Dolly devoutly. 'We wretched 
 English people have nothing half so sensible ;
 
 MOTHS, 23 
 
 you know that, Helene, as well as I do. Vere 
 is tall and very like lier poor father and the old 
 Duke.' 
 
 ' But Vere — surely that is not the name of a 
 girl?' 
 
 ' It was her father's. That was the old 
 Duchess's doing too. Of course one will call 
 her Vera. Well, au revoir ma tres chere, a ce soirJ' 
 
 ^ With nods and becks and wreathed smiles,' 
 and many good-days and pretty words, poor 
 Lady Dolly got away from her friends and 
 acquaintances, and had the common luxury of 
 hearing them all begin laughing again as soon 
 as they imagined she had got out of earshot. 
 Her young courtiers accompanied her, of course, 
 but she dismissed them on the doorstep. 
 
 ' I can't think of anything but my child 
 to-day ! ' she said very charmingly. ' So glad 
 you think her nice-looking. When she is 
 
 dressed, you know ' and she disappeared into 
 
 her own house with the phrase unfinished, 
 leaving all it suggested to her hearers. 
 
 * Where's Yere?' she said sharply to her 
 counsellor, entering the breakfast-room, before
 
 24 MOTHS. 
 
 the empty stove of which, from the sheer fire- 
 place club-room habit of his race, that person 
 stood smoking. 
 
 ' Gone to her room,' he answered. ' You've 
 made her cry. You were nasty, weren't you ? ' 
 
 ' I was furious ! Who wouldn't have been ? 
 l.^hat vile dress ! that abominable old woman ! 
 And kissing me too — me — on the beach ! ' 
 
 Her companion smiled grimly. 
 
 ^ She couldn't tell that one mustn't touch 
 you when you're "done up." You didn't do 
 up so much three years ago. She'll soon learn, 
 never fear.' 
 
 ' You grow quite horribly rude, Jack.' 
 
 He smoked serenely, 
 
 ' And quite too odiously coarse.' 
 
 He continued to smoke. 
 
 She often abused him, but she never could 
 do without him ; and he was aware of that. 
 
 ^ And what a height she is ! and what her 
 gowns will cost ! and she must come out soon — ■ 
 and that horrid Helene ! ' sobbed Lady Dolly, 
 fairly bursting into tears. She had been so 
 gay and comfortable at Trouville^ and now it
 
 MOTHS. 25 
 
 was all over. What comfort could there be with 
 a girl nearly six feet high, that looked twenty 
 years old when she was sixteen, and who called 
 her ' Mother ! ' 
 
 ' Don't make a fuss,' said the counsellor 
 from the stove. * She's very handsome, awfully 
 pretty, you'll marry her in no time, and be just 
 as larky as you were before. Don't cry, there's 
 a dear little soul. Look here, the cutlets are 
 getting cold, and there's all these mullets 
 steaming away for nothing. Come and eat, and 
 the thing won't seem so terrible.' 
 
 Being versed in the ways of consolations, he 
 opened a bottle of Moselle with an inviting 
 rush of sound, and let the golden stream foam 
 itself softly over a lump of ice in a glass. Lady 
 Dolly looked up^ dried her eyes, and sat down 
 at the table. 
 
 ^ Vere must be hungry, surely,' she said, with 
 a sudden remembrance, twenty minutes later, 
 eating her last morsel of a truffled timhdle. 
 
 The counsellor smiled grimly. 
 
 ' It's rather late to think about that ; I sent 
 her her breakfast before you came in,'
 
 26 MOTHS, 
 
 ' Dear me ! how very fatherly of you ! ' 
 
 The counsellor laughed. *I feel like her 
 father, I assure you.' 
 
 Lady Dolly coloured, and lit a cigarette. 
 She felt that she would not digest her break- 
 fast. Henceforth there would be two bills to 
 pay — the interest of them at any rate — at all 
 the great tailors' and milliners' houses in Paris 
 and London ; she had an uneasy sense that to 
 whirl in and out the mazes of the cotillons, or 
 smoke your cigarette on the smooth lawns 
 of shooting- clubs, vis-a-vis with your own 
 daughter, was a position, in the main, rather 
 ridiculous ; and she had still an uneasier con- 
 viction that the girl in the brown holland 
 would not be taught in a moment to compre- 
 hend the necessity for the existence of Jack 
 — and the rest. 
 
 ' That horrid old duchess ! ' she murmured, 
 sinking to sleep with the last atom of her 
 cigarette crumbling itself away on the open 
 page of a French novel. For it was the 
 duchess who had sent her Yere.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Lady Dorothy Vakderdecken, who was 
 Lady Dolly to everybody, down to tlie very 
 "boys that ran after her carriage in the streets, 
 was the seventh daughter of a very poor peer, 
 the Earl of Caterham, who was a clever poli- 
 tician, bnt always in a chronic state of financial 
 embarassment. Lady Dolly had made a very 
 silly love-match with her own cousin, Yere 
 Herbert, a younger son of her uncle the Duke 
 of Mull and Cantire, when she was only seven- 
 teen, and he had just left Oxford and entered 
 the Church. But Vere Herbert had only lived 
 long enough for her to begin to get very tired of 
 his countrv parsonage in the wilds of the Devon-
 
 28 MOTHS. 
 
 shire moors, and to be left before she was twenty 
 with a miserable pittance for her portion, and 
 a little daughter twelve months old to plague 
 her farther. Lady Dolly cried terribly for a 
 fortnight, and thought she cried for love, when 
 she only cried for worry. In another fortnight 
 or so she had ceased to cry, had found out that 
 crape brightened her pretty tea-rose skin, had 
 discarded her baby to the care of her aunt and 
 mother-in-law, the old and austere Duchess of 
 Mull, and had gone for her health with her 
 own gay little mother, the Countess of Cater- 
 ham, to the south of France. In the south of 
 France Lady Doily forgot that she had ever 
 cried at all ; and in a year's time from the loss 
 of Vere Herbert had married herself again to a 
 Mr. Vanderdecken, an Englishman of Dutch 
 extraction, a rich man, of no remarkable 
 lineage, a financier, a contractor, a politician, 
 a very restless creature, always rushing about 
 alone, and never asking any questions — which 
 suited her. On the other hand it suited him 
 to ally himself with a score of great families, 
 and obtain a lovely and high-born wife ; it was
 
 Moths. 29 
 
 one of tliose marriages whicli everybody calls 
 so sensible, so suitable, so very nice! Quite 
 unlike the marriage with poor Vere Herbert, 
 which everybody had screamed at, as they had 
 not made up five hundred a year in income, or 
 forty-five years in age, between them. 
 
 Lady Dolly and Mr. Vanderdecken did not 
 perhaps find it so perfectly well assorted when 
 they had had a little of it ; she thought him 
 stingy, he thought her frivolous, but they did 
 not tell anybody else so, and so everybody 
 always said that the marriage was very nice. 
 They were always seen in the Bois and the Park 
 together, and always kept house together three 
 months every spring in London ; they went to 
 country houses together, and certainly dined 
 out together at least a dozen times every 
 season : nothing could be nicer. Lady Dolly took 
 care of that. 
 
 She thought him a great bore, a great 
 screw ; she never had enough money by half, 
 and he was sometimes very nasty about checques. 
 But he was not troublesome about anything 
 else, and was generally head over ears in some
 
 30 MOTHS. 
 
 wonderful loan, or contract, or subsidy, which 
 entailed distant journeys, and absorbed him 
 entirely ; so that, on the whole, she was content 
 and enjoyed herself. 
 
 This morning, however, she had gone down 
 to the shore not indeed fully anticipating such 
 a blow as had fallen upon her, but rufiled, dis- 
 gusted, and nervous, conscious that her daughter 
 was travelling towards her, and furious with 
 the person she termed a ' horrid old cat.' 
 
 The old cat was the now dowager Duchess 
 of Mull, who for fifteen years had kept safe in 
 Northumbria the daughter of poor Yere, and 
 now had hurled her like a cannon-ball at Lady 
 Dolly's head in this hideous, abominable, un- 
 foreseen manner, straight on the sands of 
 Trouville, in sight of that snake in angel's 
 guise, the Princesse Helene Olgarouski ! 
 
 Lady Dolly, who never would allow that 
 she gave up lier maternal rights, though she 
 would never be bored with maternal responsi- 
 bilities, had quarrelled for the nine-hundredth 
 time (by post) with the Duchess of Mull; 
 quarrelled desperately, impudently, irrevocably,
 
 MOTHS. 31 
 
 quarrelled once too often; and the result of 
 the quarrel had been the instant despatch of 
 her daughter to Trouville, with the duchess's 
 declaration that she could struggle for the 
 soul of her poor son's child no longer, and that 
 come what would, she consigned Vere to her 
 mother then and for ever more. 
 
 ' The horrid woman will be howling for the 
 child again in a week's time,' thought Lady 
 Dolly, * but she has done it to spite me, and 
 I'll keep the child to spite her. That's only 
 fair.' 
 
 The duchess had taken her at her word, 
 that was all ; but then, indeed, there are few 
 things more spiteful that one can do to anybody 
 than to take them at their word. Lady Dolly 
 had been perplexed, irritated, and very angry 
 with herself for having written all that rubbish 
 about suffering from the unnatural deprivation 
 of her only child's society ; rubbish which had 
 brought this stroke of retribution on her 
 head. 
 
 She had pulled her blonde pe^ruque all awry 
 in her vexation ; she did not want ih^t perruqiie
 
 82 MOTHS. 
 
 at all, for her own hair was thick and pretty, 
 but she covered it up and wore the 'perruque 
 because it was the fashion to do so. 
 
 Lady Dolly had always been, and was very 
 pretty : she had lovely large eyes, and the 
 tiniest mouth, and a complexion which did not 
 want all the pains she bestowed on it ; when 
 she had not the jperruque on, she had dark silky 
 hair all tumbled about over her eyebrows in a 
 disarray that cost her maid two hours to 
 compose ; and her eyebrows themselves were 
 drawn beautifully in two fine, dark, slender 
 lines by a pencil that supplied the one defect of 
 Nature. When she was seventeen, at the 
 rectory, amongst the rosebuds on the lawn, she 
 had been a rosebud herself; now she was a 
 Dresden statuette ; the statuette was the more 
 finished and brilliant beauty of the two, and 
 never seemed the worse for wear. This is the 
 advantage of artificial over natural loveliness ; 
 the latter will alter with health or feeling, the 
 former never ; it is always the same, unless 
 you come in on it at its toilette, or see it when 
 it is very ill.
 
 MOTHS. 33 
 
 Lady Dolly this morning woke up prema- 
 turely from her sleep and fancied she was in. 
 the old parsonage gardens on the lawn, amongst 
 the roses in Devonshire, with poor Vere's pale 
 handsome face looking down so tenderly on 
 hers. She felt a mist before her eyes, a tight- 
 ness at her throat ; a vague and worried pain 
 all over her. ' It is the prawns ! ' she said to 
 herself, * I will never smoke after prawns 
 again.' 
 
 She was all alone ; the counsellor had gone 
 to his schooner, other counsellors were at their 
 hotels, it was an hour when everything except 
 Englishmen and dogs were indoors. She 
 rose, shook her muslin breakfast-wrapper 
 about her impatiently, and went to see her 
 daughter. 
 
 ' He use(3 to be so fond of me, poor fellow ! * 
 she thought. Such a pure fond passion then 
 amongst the roses by the sea. It had all been 
 very silly, and he had used to bore her dread- 
 fully with Keble, and his namesake, George of 
 holy memory, and that old proser Thomas 
 a-Kempis ; but still it had been a different 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 MOTHS. 
 
 thing to all tliese other loves. He lay in his 
 grave there by the Atlantic amongst the Devon 
 roses, and she had had no memory of him for 
 many a year, and when he had been alive, she 
 had thought the church and the old women, 
 and the saints, and the flannel, and the choral 
 services, and the matins- and vesper-nonsense, 
 all so tiresome ; but still he had loved her. Of 
 course they all adored her now, heaps of them 
 — but his love had been a different thing to 
 theirs. And somehow Lady Dolly felt a tinge 
 and twinge of shame. 
 
 ' Poor Vere,' she murmured to herself ten- 
 derly ; and so went to see his daughter, who 
 had been called after him by that absurd old 
 woman, the Duchess of Mull, with whom Lady 
 Dolly in her dual relation of niece and daugh- 
 ter-in-law had always waged a fierce undying 
 war : a war in which she had now got the 
 worst of it, 
 
 ' May I come in, dear ? ' she said at the 
 bed-chamber door. She felt almost nervous. 
 It was very absurd, but why vrould the girl 
 have her dead father's eves ?
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 The girl opened the door and stood silent. 
 
 'A beautiful creature. They are quite 
 right,' thought Lady Dolly, now that her brain 
 was no longer filled with the dreadful rumpled 
 brown hoUand, and the smiling face of Princess 
 Helene. The girl was in a white wrapper like 
 her own, only without any lace, and any of the 
 ribbons that adorned Lady Dolly at all points, 
 as tassels a Eoman horse at Carnival. Lady 
 Dolly was too lovely herself, and also far too 
 contented with herself to feel any jealousy; 
 but she looked at her daughter critically, as 
 she would have looked at a young untried 
 actress on the boards of the Odeon. 'Quite 
 another style to me, that is fortunate,' she 
 thought as she looked. 'Like Vere — very — 
 quite extraordinarily like Yere — only hand- 
 somer still.' 
 
 Then she kissed her daughter very prettily 
 on both cheeks, and with effusion embraced 
 her, much as she embraced Princess Helene or 
 anybody else that she hated. 
 
 ' You took me by surprise to-day, love,' she 
 said with a little accent of apology, ^ and 
 
 D2
 
 36 MOTHS. 
 
 you know I do so detest scenes. Pray try and 
 remember that.' 
 
 ' Scenes ? ' said Vere. ' Please what are 
 they?' 
 
 * Scenes ? ' said Lady Dolly, kissing her 
 once more, and a little puzzled as everybody 
 is, who is suddenly asked to define a familiar 
 word. ' Scenes ? Well, dear me, scenes are — 
 scenes. Anything, you know, that makes a 
 fuss, that looks silly, that sets people laughing ; 
 don't you understand ? Anything done before 
 people, you know : it is vulgar.' 
 
 * I think I understand,' said Vere Herbert. 
 She was a very lovely girl, and despite her 
 height still looked a child. Her small head 
 was perfectly poised on a slender neck, and her 
 face, quite colourless, with a complexion like 
 the leaf of a white rose, had perfect features, 
 straight, delicate, and noble ; her fair hair was 
 cut square over her brows, and loosely knotted 
 behind ; she had a beautiful serious mouth, not 
 so small as her mother's, and serene eyes, grey 
 as night, contemplative, yet wistful. 
 
 She was calm and still. She had cried as
 
 MOTHS. 37 
 
 if her heart would break, but she would have 
 died rather than let her mother guess it. She 
 had been what the French call refoulee sur 
 elle-meme j and the process is chilling. 
 
 * Have you all you want ? ' said Lady Dolly, 
 casting a hasty glance round the room. * You 
 know I didn't expect you, dear; not in the 
 least.' 
 
 ' Surely my grandmother wrote ? ' 
 
 'Your grandmother telegraphed that you. 
 had started ; just like her ! Of course I wished 
 to have you here, and meant to do so, but not 
 all in a moment.' 
 
 ' The horrid old woman will be howling for 
 the child back again in three weeks' time,' 
 thought Lady Dolly once more. ' But she has 
 done it to spite me : the old cat ! ' 
 
 ' Are you sorry to come to me, love ? ' she 
 said sweetly meanwhile, drawing Vere down 
 beside her on a couch. 
 
 ' I ivas very glad,' answered Yere. 
 
 Lady Dolly discreetly omitted to notice the 
 past tense. ' Ah, no doubt, very dear of you ! 
 It is three years since I saw you ; for those few
 
 38 MOTHS, 
 
 days at Bulmer hardly count. Bulmer is 
 terribly dull, isn't it ? ' 
 
 ' I suppose it is dull ; I was not so. If 
 grandmamma had not been so often ' 
 
 ' Cross as two sticks, you mean/ laughed 
 Lady Dolly. ' Oh, I know her, my dear : the 
 most disagreea^ble person that ever lived. The 
 dear old duke was so nice and so handsome ; 
 but you hardly remember him, of course. Your 
 grandmamma is a cat, dear — a cat, positively a 
 cat ! We will not talk about her. And how 
 she has dressed you ! It is quite wicked to 
 dress a girl like that, it does her taste so 
 much harm. You are very handsome, Yere.' 
 
 ' Yes ? I am like my father they say.' 
 
 ' Yery.' 
 
 Lady Dolly felt the mist over her eyes again, 
 and this time knew it was not the prawns. She 
 saw the sunny lawn in Devon, and the roses, 
 and the little large-eyed child at her breast. 
 Heavens ! what a long way away all that time 
 seemed. 
 
 She gazed intently at Yere with a musing 
 pathetic tenderness that moved the girl, and
 
 MOTHS, 39 
 
 made her tremble and glow, because at last 
 this lovely mother of hers seemed to feel. 
 Lady Dolly's gaze grew graver and graver, 
 more and more introspective. 
 
 ^ She is thinking of the past and of my 
 father/ thought the girl tenderl}', and her 
 young heart swelled with reverent sympathy. 
 She did not dare to break her mother's silence. 
 
 ' Yere ! ' said Lady Dolly dreamily, at 
 length, ^ I am trying to think what one can do 
 to get you decent clothes. My maid must run 
 up something for you to wear by to-morrow. 
 It is a pity to keep you shut up all this 
 beautiful weather, and a little life will do you 
 good after that prison at Bulmer. I am sure 
 those three days I was last there I thought 1 
 should have yawned till I broke my neck, I 
 did indeed, dear. She would hardly let me 
 have breakfast in my own room, and she luould 
 dine at six! — six! But she was never like 
 anybody else ; when even the duke was alive 
 she was the most obstinate, humdrum, nasty 
 old scratch-cat in the county. Such ideas too ! 
 Sh^ wa« a sort of W^^sley in petticoats, and. by
 
 40 MOTHS. 
 
 the way, her gowns were never long enough for 
 her. But I was saying, dear, I will have 
 Adrienne run up something for you directly. 
 She is clever. I never let a maid mahe a dress. 
 It is absurd. You might as well want Eubin- 
 stein to make the violin he plays on. If she is 
 inferior, she will make you look a dowdy. If 
 she is a really good maid she will not make, 
 she will arrange, what your tailor has made, 
 and perfect it — nothing more. But still, for 
 you, Adrienne will go out of her way for once. 
 She shall combine a few little things, and she 
 can get a girl to sew them for her. Something 
 to go out in they really must manage for 
 to-morrow. You shall have brown holland if 
 you are so fond of it, dear, but you shall see 
 what brown holland can look like with Adrienne.' 
 Yere sat silent. 
 
 * By the bye,' said her mother vivaciously, 
 ^ didn't you bring a maid ? Positively, not a 
 maid?' 
 
 ^ Grandmama sent Keziah : she has always 
 done very well for me.' 
 
 * Keziah ! ' echoed Lady Dolly with a shudder.
 
 MOTHS. 41 
 
 ^ How exactly it is like your grandmotlier to 
 give you a woman called Keziah ! That horrible 
 Fraulein one might dismiss too, don't you think? 
 You are old enough to do without her, and you 
 shall have a nice French maid ; Adrienne will 
 soon find one.' 
 
 The girl's eyes dilated with fear. 
 
 * Oh ! pray do not send away the Fraulein ! 
 We are now in the conic sections.' 
 
 * The what ? ' said Lady Dolly. 
 
 'I mean I could not go on in science or 
 mathematics without her, and besides, she is so 
 good.' 
 
 ' Mathematics ! science ! why, what can you 
 want to make yourself hateful for, like a Girton 
 College guy? ' 
 
 ' I want to know things ; pray do not send 
 away the Fraulein.' 
 
 Lady Dolly, who was at heart very good- 
 natured when her own comfort was not too much 
 interfered with, patted her cheek and laughed. 
 
 'What should jou want to know? — know 
 how to dress, how to curtsey, how to look your 
 best; that is all you want to know. Believe me,
 
 42 MOTHS. 
 
 men will ask notliing more of you. As for your 
 hideous Schroder, I think her the most odious 
 person in existence, except your grandmother. 
 But if her blue spectacles comfort you, keep 
 her at present. Of course you will want some- 
 body to be with you a good deal : I can't be ; 
 and I suppose you'll have to stay with me now. 
 You may be seen here a little, and wherever I 
 go in autumn ; then you can come out in Pari« 
 in the wintar, and be presented next spring. I 
 shall do it to spite your grandmother, who has 
 behaved disgracefully to me — disgracefully ! I 
 believe she'd be capable of coming up to London 
 to present you herself, though she's never set 
 foot there for fifteen years ! ' 
 
 Yere was silent. 
 
 ' What do you like best ? ' said her mother 
 suddenly. Something in the girl worried her: 
 she could not have said what it was. 
 
 Yere lifted her great eyes dreamily. 
 
 ^ Greek,' she answered. 
 
 ' Greek I a horse ? a pony 9 a dog ? ' 
 
 'A language,' said Yere. 
 
 ' Of pourse (Irppk is a language : T know
 
 MOTHS. 43 
 
 that/ said her mother irritably. 'But of course 
 I thought you meant something* natural, sen- 
 sible ; some pet of some kind. And what do 
 you like best after that, pray ? ' 
 
 ^ Music — Greek is like music' 
 
 ' Oh dear me ! ' sighed Lady Dolly. 
 
 ^I can ride; I am fond of riding,' added 
 Yere ; ' and I can shoot, and row, and sail, and 
 steer a boat. The keepers taught me.' 
 
 ' Well, that sort of thing goes down rather, 
 now that they walk with the guns, though I'm 
 quite sure men wish them anywhere all the 
 Avhile,' said Lady Dolly, somewhat vaguely. 
 ' Only you must be masculine with- it, and 
 slangy, and you don't seem to me to be that in 
 the least. Do you know, Vere — it is a horrible 
 thing to say — but I am dreadfully afraid you 
 will be just the old-fashioned, prudish, open- 
 air, touch-me-not Englishwoman ! I am in- 
 deed. Now you know that won't answer 
 anywhere, nowadays. 
 
 ' Answer — what ? ' 
 
 ' Don't take my words up like that, it is 
 rude. I mean, you know, that kind of style is
 
 44 MOTHS. 
 
 gone out altogether, pleases nobody ; men hate 
 it. The only women that please nowadays are 
 Russians and Americans. Why P Because in 
 their totally different ways they neither of them 
 care one fig what they do if only it please them 
 to do it. They are all chic you know. Now 
 you haven't a bit of chic ; you look like a 
 creature out of Burne Jones's things, don't 
 you know, only more — more — ^religious-looking. 
 You really look as if you were studying your 
 Bible every minute ; it is most extraordinary ! 
 
 * Her father iijould read me Keble and 
 Kempis before she was born,' thought Lady 
 Dolly angrily, her wrath rising against the dead 
 man for the psychological inconsistencies in 
 her daughter ; a daughter she would have been 
 a million times better without at any time. 
 
 * Well, then, my love,' she said suddenly ; 
 ' you shall ride and you shall swim ; that will 
 certainly help you better than your Greek and 
 your conic sessions, whatever they may be, they 
 sound like something about magistrates, per- 
 haps they have taught you law as well ? ' 
 
 ' May I swim here ? ' asked Vere.
 
 MOTHS. 45 
 
 ' Of course ; it's the thing to do. Can you 
 dive?' 
 
 ' Oh yes ! I am used to the water.' 
 
 ' Very well, then. But wait ; you can't 
 have any bathing-dress ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. I brought it. Would you wish to 
 see it ? Keziah ' 
 
 Keziah was bidden to seek for and brins: 
 out the bathing-dress, and after a little delay 
 did so. 
 
 Lady Dolly looked. Gradually an expression 
 of horror, such as is depicted on the faces of 
 those who are supposed to see ghosts, spread 
 itself over her countenance and seemed to 
 change it to stone. 
 
 ' That thing ! ' she gasped. 
 
 What she saw was the long indigo-coloured 
 linen gown — high to the throat and down to 
 the feet — of the uneducated British bather, 
 whose mind has not been opened by the sweet- 
 ness and light of continental shores. 
 
 * That thing ! ' gasped Lady Dolly. 
 
 ' What is the matter with it ? ' said_Yere, 
 timidly and perplexed^
 
 46 MOTHS. 
 
 ' Matter ? It is indecent ! ' 
 
 ' Indecent ? ' Yere coloured all over tlie 
 wliite rose-leaf beauty of her face. 
 
 ' Indecent/ reiterated Lady Dolly. ' If it 
 isn't worse ! Good gracious ! It must have 
 been worn at the deluge. The very children 
 would stone you! Of course I knew you 
 couldn't have any decent dress. You shall 
 have one like mine made to-morrow, and then 
 you can kick about as you like. Blue and 
 white or blue and pink. You shall see mine.' 
 
 She rang, and sent one of her maids for one 
 of her bathing costumes, which were many and 
 of all hues. 
 
 Yere looked at the brilliant object vdien it 
 arrived, ^Duzzled and troubled by it. She could 
 not understand it. It appeared to be cut off 
 at the shoulders and the knees. 
 
 ^ It is like v^hat the circus-riders wear,' she 
 said, with a deep breath. 
 
 ' Well, it is, now you name it,' said Lady 
 Dolly amused, ' You shall have one to-morrow.' 
 
 Yere's face crimsoned. 
 
 ' But what covers one's legs and arms ? '
 
 MOTHS. 47 
 
 ' Nothing ! what a little sillj you are. I 
 suppose you have nothing the matter with 
 them, have you ? no mark, or twist, or any- 
 thing ? I don't remember any when you were 
 little. '!'ou were thought an extraordinarily 
 well-made baby.' 
 
 Might one then go naked provided only 
 one had no mark or twist? Vere wondered, 
 and wondered at the world into which she 
 had strayed. 
 
 ' I would never wear a costume like that,' 
 she said quietly after a little pause. 
 
 ' You will wear what I tell you,' said her 
 sweet little mother sharply ; ^ and for goodness' 
 sake, child, don't be a prude whatever you 
 are. Prudes belong to JSToah's Ark, like your 
 bathing-gown.' 
 
 Vere was silent. 
 
 ' Is Mr. Vanderdecken here ? ' she asked at 
 length, to change the theme, and, finding her 
 mother did not speak again, who, indeed, was 
 busy, thinking what her clothes were likely to 
 cost, and also whether she would arrange a 
 marriage for her with the young Due de Tarn-
 
 48 MOTHS. 
 
 bour, son of the Prince de Chambree. The best 
 alliance she could think of at the minute — but 
 then the poor child had no dot, 
 
 ' Mr. Vanderdecken ? ' said Lady Dolly 
 waking to fact. ' Oh, he is on the sea going 
 somewhere. He is always going somewhere ; 
 it is Java or Japan, or Jupiter; something 
 with a J. He makes his money in that sort 
 of way, you knov/. I never understand it 
 myself. Whenever people want money he goes, 
 and he makes it because the people he goes to 
 haven't got any ; isn't it queer ? Come here. 
 Do you know, Yere, you are very pretty ? You 
 will be very handsome. Kiss me again, dear.' 
 
 Yere did so, learning, by a kind of intuition, 
 that she must touch her mother without in- 
 juring the artistic work of the maids and the 
 * little secrets.' Then she stood silent and 
 passive. 
 
 * She is an uncomfortable girl,' thought 
 Lady Dolly once more. 'And, dear me, so like 
 poor Yere ! What a tall creature you are get- 
 ting,' she said aloud. ' You will be married in 
 another year.'
 
 MOTHS. 49 
 
 ' Oh no ! ' said Yere with a glance of alarm. 
 
 ' You unnatural child ! How on earth 
 would you like to live if you don't want to be 
 married ? ' 
 
 ' With the Fraulein in the country.' 
 
 ' All your life ! And die an old maid ? ' 
 
 ' I should not mind.' 
 
 Lady Dolly laughed, but it was with a sort 
 of shock and shudder, as an orthodox person 
 laughs when they hear what is amusing but 
 irreverent. 
 
 ' Why do you say such things ? ' she said 
 impatiently. ' They are nonsense, and you 
 don't mean them.' 
 
 ' I mean them — quite.' 
 
 ' Nonsense ! ' said Lady Dolly, who never 
 discussed with an3'body, finding asseveration 
 answer all purposes very much better ; as, in 
 deed, it does in most cases. ' Well, good-bye 
 my love ; you want to rest, and you can't go 
 out till you have something to wear, and I 
 have an immense deal to do. Good-bye ; you 
 are very pretty ! ' 
 
 ' Who was that gentleman I saw ? ' asked 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 50 MOTHS. 
 
 Vere, as her mother rose and kissed her once 
 more on her silky fair hair. ' Is he any relation 
 of papa's ? He was very kind.' 
 
 Lady Dolly coloured ever so little. 
 
 ' Oh ! that's Jack. Surely you remember 
 seeing Jack three years ago at Homburg, when 
 you came out to meet me there ? ' 
 
 ' Is he a relation of ours ? ' 
 
 ^ No ; not a relation exactly ; only a friend.' 
 
 ' And has he no name but Jack ? ' 
 
 ' Of course. Don't say silly things. He is 
 Lord Jura, Lord Shetland's son. He is in the 
 Guards. A very old acquaintance, dear — recol- 
 lects you as a baby.' 
 
 ^ A friend of my father's then ? ' 
 
 ^Well, no dear, not quite. Not quite so 
 far back as that. Certainly he may have fagged 
 for poor Vere at Eton perhaps, but I doubt it. 
 Good-bye, darling. I will send you Adrienne. 
 You may put yourself in her hands blindly. 
 She has perfect taste.' 
 
 Then Lady Dolly opened the door, and 
 escaped. 
 
 Yere Herbert was left to herself. She was
 
 MOTHS. 61 
 
 not tired ; slie was strong and healthful, for all 
 the Avhite rose paleness of her fair shin ; and a 
 twelve hours' tossing on the sea, and a day or 
 two's rumbling on the rail, had no power to 
 fatigue her. Her grandmother, thongh a hum- 
 drum and a cat, according to Lady Dolly, had 
 sundry old-fashioned notions from which the 
 girl had benefitted both in body and mind, 
 and the fresh strong air of Buhner Chase — a 
 breezy old forest place on the Northumberland 
 seashore, where the morose old duchess found 
 a dower house to her taste — had braced her 
 physically, as study and the absence of any sort 
 of excitement had done mentally, and made 
 her as unlike her mother as anything female 
 could have been. The Duchess of Mull was 
 miserly, cross-tempered, and old-fashioned in 
 her ways and in her prejudices, but she was an 
 upright w^oman, a gentlewoman, and no fool, 
 .as she would say herself. She had been harsh 
 with the girl, but she had loved her and been 
 just to her, and Yere had spent her life at 
 Bulmer Chase not unhappily, varied only by an 
 occasional visit to Lady Doly, who had always 
 
 E 2 
 
 Ss>nonum<«s
 
 62 MOTHS. 
 
 seemed to the cliild something too bright and 
 fair to be mortal, and to have an enchanted 
 existence, where caramels and cosaques rained, 
 and music was always heard, and the sun shone 
 all day long. 
 
 She was all alone. The Fraulein was 
 asleep in the next room. The maid did not 
 come. The girl kneeled down by the window- 
 seat and looked out through one of the chinks 
 oi the blinds. It was late afternoon by the 
 sun ; the human butterflies were beginning to 
 come out again. Looking up and down she 
 saw the whole sunshiny coast, and the dancing 
 water that was boisterous enough to be pretty 
 and to swell the canvas of the yachts standing 
 off the shore. 
 
 ' How bright it all looks ! ' she thought, 
 with a little sigh ; the salt fresh smell did her 
 good, and Buhner, amidst its slowly budding 
 woods and dreary moors, and long dark 
 winters, had been anything but bright. Yet 
 she felt very unhappy and lonely. Her mother 
 seemed a great deal farther away than she had 
 done when Vere had sat dreaming about her
 
 MOTHS. 63 
 
 on the side of the rough heathered hills, with 
 the herons calling across from one marshy pool 
 to another. 
 
 She leaned against the green blind and 
 ceased to see the sea and the sky, the beach 
 and the butterflies, for a little while, her tears 
 were so full under her lashes, and she did her 
 best to keep them back. She was full of pain 
 because her mother did ,not care for her ; but, 
 indeed, why should she care? said Vere to 
 herself; they had been so little together. 
 
 She looked, almost without seeing it at 
 first, at the picture underneath her ; the stream, 
 which gradually swelled and grew larger, of 
 beautifully-dressed fairy-like women, whose 
 laughter every now and then echoed up to her. 
 It was one unbroken current of harmonious 
 colour, rolled out like a brilliant riband on 
 the fawn-coloured sand against the azure 
 sea. 
 
 ' And have they all nothing to do but to 
 enjoy themselves ? ' thought Yere. It seemed 
 so. If Black Care were anywhere at Trouville, 
 as it was everywhere else in the world, it took
 
 64 MOTHS. 
 
 pains to wear a face like tlie rest and read its 
 * Figaro.' 
 
 She heard the door underneath unclose, and 
 from nnderneath the green verandah she saw 
 her mother sannter out. Three other ladies 
 were with her and half a dozen men. Thej 
 were talking and laughing all at once, no one 
 waiting to be listened to or seeming to expect 
 it ; thej walked across the beach and sat down. 
 They put up gorgeous sunshades and outspread 
 huge fans •. they were all twitter, laughter, 
 colour, mirth. 
 
 All this going to and fro of gay people, the 
 patter of feet and flutter of petticoats, amused 
 the girl to watch almost as much as if she had 
 been amidst it. There were such a sparkle of 
 sea, such a radiance of sunshine, such a rain- 
 bow of colour, that though it would have com- 
 posed ill for a landscape, it made a pretty 
 panorama. 
 
 Vere watched it, conjecturing in a youthful 
 fanciful ignorant way all kinds of things about 
 the persons who seemed so happy there. 
 When she had gazed for about twenty minutes, 
 making her eyes ache and getting tired, one of
 
 MOTHS. 55 
 
 them especially attracted her attention by the 
 way in which people all turned after him as he 
 passed, and the delight that his greeting 
 appeared to cause those with whom he 
 lingered. He was a man of such remarkable 
 personal beauty that this alone might have 
 been reason'enouo^h for the eao-er welcome of 
 the listless ladies ; but there was even a greater 
 charm in his perfect grace of movement and 
 vivacity and airy ease : he stayed little time 
 with any one; but wherever he loitered a 
 moment a23peared to be the centre of all 
 smiles. She did not know that he was her 
 admirer of the noonday, who had looked at her 
 as he had sauntered along in his bathing 
 shroud and his white shoes ; but she watched 
 the easy graceful attitudes of him with interest 
 as he cast himself down on the sand, leaning 
 on his elbow, by a group of fair women. 
 
 ' Can you tell me who that gentleman is ? ' 
 she asked of her mother's head-maid, the 
 inimitable Adrienne. 
 
 Adrienne looked and smiled, 
 
 ^ Oh ! that is M. de Correze.' 
 
 * Correze ! ' Vere's eyes opened iu a
 
 66 MOTHS. 
 
 blaze of eager wonder, and the colour rose 
 in her pale cheeks. ' Correze ! Are you 
 sure ? ' 
 
 ' But yes : I am quite sure,' laughed Adri- 
 enne. ' Does mademoiselle feel emotion at the 
 sight of him? She is only like all others of 
 her sex. Ah ! le heau Correze / ' 
 
 ' I have never heard him sing,' said Vere, 
 very low, as if she spoke of some religious 
 thing ; ' but I would give anything, anything, 
 to do so. And the music he composes him- 
 self is beautiful. There is one " Messe de 
 Minuit '" 
 
 ' Mademoiselle will hear him often enough 
 when she is once in the world,' said Adrienne, 
 good-naturedly. ^ Ah ! when she shall see him 
 in "Faust" that will be an era in her life. 
 But it is not his singing that makes the great 
 ladies rave of him ; it is his charm. Oh, quel 
 philtre cf amour I ' 
 
 And Adrienne quite sighed with despair, 
 and then laughed. 
 
 Vere coloured a little; Keziah did not 
 discourse about men being love-philtres.
 
 MOTHS, 67 
 
 ' Measure me for my clotlies ; I am tired,' 
 she said with a childish coldness and dignity, 
 turning away from the window. 
 
 ' I am entirely at mademoiselle's service,' said 
 Adrienne with answering dignity. ' Whoever 
 has had the honour to clothe mademoiselle has 
 been strangely neglectful of her highest in- 
 terests.' 
 
 '^ My clothes my highest interest ! I never 
 think about them ! ' 
 
 ' That is very sad. They are really barbaric. 
 If Mademoiselle could behold herself ' 
 
 * They are useful,' said Yere coldly; 'that 
 is all that is necessary.' 
 
 Adrienne was respectfully silent, but she 
 shuddered as if she had heard a blasphemy. 
 She could not comprehend how the young 
 barbarian could have been brought up by a 
 duchess. Adrienne had never been to Bulmer, 
 and had never seen Her Grace of Mull, with 
 her silver spectacles, her leather boots, her 
 tweed clothes, her farm-ledgers, her studbooks, 
 and her ever-open Bible. 
 
 ' Measure me quickly,' said Vere. She had
 
 58 MOTHS. 
 
 lowered the green jalousies, and would not 
 look out any more. Yet she felt happier. She 
 missed dark, old, misty Bulmer with its oak- 
 woods by the ocean ; yet this little gay room, 
 with its pretty cretonne, cream-coloured, with 
 pale pink roses, its gilded mirrors, its rose 
 china, its white muslin, was certainly brighter 
 and sunnier, and who could tell but what her 
 mother would grow to love her some day ? 
 
 At nine o'clock Lady Dolly, considering 
 herself a martyr to mater nit}^, ran into the 
 little room where Yere was at tea with her 
 governess ; Lady Dolly was arrayed for the 
 evening sauterie at the Casino, and was in great 
 haste to be gone. 
 
 'Have you everything you like, darling?' 
 she asked, pulling on her pearl-hued Crispins, 
 ' Did you have a nice little dinner ? Yes ? 
 Quite sure ? Has Adrienne been to you ? An 
 excellent creature ; perfect taste. Dear me, 
 what a pity ! — you might have come and 
 jumped about to-night if you had had only 
 something to wear. Of course you like 
 dancing ? '
 
 MOTHS. 59 
 
 ' I dislike it very much.' 
 
 ' Dear me ! Ali well ! you won't say so 
 after a cotillon or two. You shall have a 
 cotillon that Zouroff leads : there is nobody 
 better. Good night, my sweet Vera. Mind, 
 I shall always call you Vera. It sounds so 
 Eussian and nice, and is much prettier than 
 Yere.' 
 
 ' I do not think so, mother, and I am not 
 Russian.' 
 
 ' You are very contradictory and opinion- 
 ated; much too opinionated for a girl. It is 
 horrid in a girl to have opinions. Fraulein, 
 how could you let her have opinions ? Good 
 night, dear. I shall hardly see you to-morrow, 
 if at all. We shall be cruising about in Jack's 
 yacht, and we shall start very early. The 
 Grand Duchess will go out with us. She is 
 great fun, only she does get in such a rage 
 when she loses at play, that it is horrible to 
 see. So sorry you must be shut up, my poor 
 Yera ! ' 
 
 ' May I not go out just for a walk ? ' 
 
 ' Well, I don't know — yes, really, I think
 
 60 MOTHS. 
 
 you migkt; if it's very early mind, and you 
 keep out of everybody's siglit. Pray take care 
 not a soul sees you.' 
 
 ' Is not this better, then ? ' murmured the 
 ofiender, glancing down on a white serge frock, 
 which she had put on in the hope that it might 
 please. It was a simple braided dress with a 
 plain silver belt, and was really unobjection- 
 able. 
 
 Lady Dolly scanned the garment with a 
 critical air and a parti pris. Certainly it might 
 have done for the morrow's yachting, but then 
 she did not want the wearer of it on the yacht. 
 The girl would have to be everywhere very 
 soon, of course, but Lady Dolly put off the evil 
 day as long as she could. 
 
 ' It is the cut/ she said, dropping her glass 
 with a sigh. ' It can't be Morgan's ? ' 
 
 ' Who is Morgan ? ' asked the child, so be- 
 nighted that she had not even heard of the 
 great Worth of nautical costume. 
 
 'Morgan is the only creature possible for 
 serge,' sighed Lady Dolly. ' You don't seem 
 to understand darling. Material is nothing.
 
 MOTHS. 61 
 
 Make is everytliing. Look at our camelot 
 and percale gowns tliat Worth sends us ; and 
 look at the satins and velvets of a hourgeoise 
 from Asnieres or a wine-merchant's wife from 
 Clapham ! Oh, my dear child ! cut your gown 
 out of your dog's towel or your horses' cloths 
 if you like, but mind Who cuts it : that is 
 the one golden rule ! But good-night, my 
 sweetest. Sleep well.' 
 
 Lady Dolly brushed her daughter's cheek 
 with the diamond end of her earring, and took 
 herself off in a maze of pale yellow and deep 
 scarlet as mysteriously and perfectly blended 
 as the sunset colours of an Italian night. 
 
 'She is really ver^^ prett}^,' she said to 
 her counsellor as he put her cloak round 
 her and pocketed her fan. ' Eeally, very 
 handsome, like Barne Jones's things and all 
 that, don't you know.' 
 
 ' A long sight prettier and healthier than 
 any of 'em,' said the counsellor lighting his 
 cigar ; for he had small respect for the High 
 Art of his period. 
 
 They went forth into the moonlit night to
 
 02 
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 the Casino, and left Yere to the sleep into 
 which she sobbed herself like a child as she 
 still was, soothed at last by the sound of the 
 incoming tide and the muttering of the good 
 Fraulein's prayers.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 Verb was awoke at five o'clock by tumul- 
 tuous laughter, gay shrill outcries, and a sudden 
 smell of cigar smoke. It was her mother return- 
 ing home. Doors banged ; then all grew still. 
 Yere got up, looked at the sea and remembered 
 that permission to go out had been given her. 
 
 In another hour she was abroad in the soft 
 cool sunshine of early morning, the channel 
 before her, and behind her the stout form of 
 Northumbrian Keziah. 
 
 Trouvilain, as somebody has wittily called 
 it, is not lovely. Were it not so celebrated, 
 undoubtedly it would be called commonplace ; 
 but, in the very first light of morning, every
 
 64 MOTHS, 
 
 spot on earth, except a manufacturing city, 
 has some loveliness, and Trouvilain at daybreak 
 had some for Vere. There were yachts with 
 slender trim lines beautiful against the clear 
 sky. There were here and there provision 
 boats pulling out with sailors in dark blue 
 jerseys, and red capped. There were fleecy 
 white clouds, and there were cool sands ; cool 
 now, if soon they would be no better than 
 powder and dust. Along the poor planks that 
 are the treadmill of fashion, Vere's buoyant 
 young feet bore her with swiftness and pleasure 
 till she reached the Corniche des Eoches 
 Noires and got out into the charming green 
 country. 
 
 She glanced at the water and longed to 
 run into the shallows and wade and spread her 
 limbs out, and float and swim, beating the 
 sea with her slender arms and rosy toes as she 
 had done most mornings in the cold, wind- 
 swept, steel-grey northern tides of her old 
 home. 
 
 But her bathing-costume had been forbidden, 
 had even been carried away in bitter contempt
 
 MOTHS. 65 
 
 by one of the French maids, and never would 
 she go into the sea in this public place in one 
 of those sleeveless, legless, circus-rider's tunics : 
 no, never, she said to herself; and her resolves 
 were apt to be very resolute ones. Her old 
 guardian at Bulmer Chase had always said to 
 her: 'Never say "no" rashly, nor "yes" either; 
 but when you have said them, stand to them as 
 a soldier to his guns.' 
 
 She did not at all know her way, but she had 
 thought if she kept along by the water she would 
 some time or other surely get out of the sight 
 of all those gay houses, which, shut as all their 
 persiennes were, and invisible as were all their 
 occupants, yet had fashion and frivolity so 
 plainly written on their coquettish awnings, 
 their balconies, their doorways, their red gera- 
 niums and golden calceolarias blazing before 
 their blinds. At five o'clock there was nobody 
 to trouble her certainly ; yet within sight of all 
 those windows she had felt as if she were still 
 before the staring eyes and eyeglasses of the 
 cruel crowd of that terrible yesterday. 
 
 She went on quickly with the elastic step 
 VOL. I. -^
 
 t)6 MOTM^, 
 
 whicli had been used to cover so easily mile after 
 mile of the heathered moors of Bulmer, and the 
 firm yellow sands by the northern ocean. Before 
 the cloudless sun of the August daybreak was 
 much above the waters of the east with the smoke 
 of the first steamer from Havre towering grey 
 and dark against the radiant rose of the sky, 
 Vere had left Trouville, and its sleeping beauties 
 and yawning dandies in their beds, far behind 
 her, and was nearly a third of the way to 
 Villerville. She did not know anything at all 
 about Lecamus/Zs, Jules David, Challamel, and 
 Figaro with his cabin, who had made Villerville 
 famous, but she went onward because the sea 
 was blue, the sand was yellow, the air was sweet 
 and wholesome, and the solitude was complete. 
 
 Her spirits rose; light, and air, and liberty of 
 movement were necessary to her, for, in the old 
 woods and on the rough moors of Bulmer, her 
 grandmother had let her roam as she chose, on 
 foot or on her pony. It had been a stern rule 
 in other things, but as regarded air and exer- 
 cise she had enjoyed the most perfect freedom. 
 
 * Are you tired, Keziah ? ' she cried at last, 
 noticing that the patient waiting-woman lagged
 
 MOTHS. 67 
 
 behind. The stout Northumbrian admitted 
 that she was. She had never been so in her 
 life before ; but that frightful sea journey from 
 Southampton had left her stomach ^ orkard.' 
 
 Yere was touched to compunction. 
 
 ' You poor creature ! and I brought you out 
 without your breakfast, and we have walked — 
 oh ! ever so many miles/ she said in poignant 
 self-reproach. ' Keziah, look here, there is a 
 nice smooth stone. Sit down on it and rest, 
 and I will run about. Yes ; do not make any 
 objection ; sit down.' 
 
 Keziah, who adored her very shadow as it 
 fell on sward or sand, demurred faintly, but the 
 flesh was weak, and the good woman dropped 
 down on the stone with a heavy thud, as of a 
 sack falling to earth, and sat there in plaid 
 shawl and homespun gown, with her hands on 
 her knees, the homely sober figure that had 
 seemed to Lady Dolly to have come out of the 
 ark like the indigo bathing-dress. 
 
 Yere left her on that madreporic throne, 
 and strayed onward herself along by the edge 
 of the sea, 
 
 pa
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 On one side of lier was a dark bastion of 
 rock, above that, out of sight, were green pas- 
 tures and golden corn fields ; on the other was 
 the Channel, placid, sunny, very unlike the surg- 
 ing turbulent gigantic waves of her old home. 
 
 ' Can you ever be rough ? Can you ever 
 look like salt water?' she said with a little 
 contempt to it, not knowing anything about 
 the appalling chopping seas and formidable 
 swell of the Channel which the boldest mariners 
 detest more than all the grand furies of Baltic or 
 Atlantic. But it was bright blue water fretted 
 with little curls of foam, and the low waves 
 rolled up lazily, and lapped the sand at her 
 feet; and she felt happy and playful, as was 
 natural to her age ; and that she was quite 
 alone mattered nothing to her, for she had 
 never had any young companions, and never 
 played except with the dogs. 
 
 She wandered about, and ran here and there, 
 and found some sandpipers' empty nests, and 
 gathered some gorse and stuck it in the riband 
 of her old sailor's hat, and was gay and careless, 
 and sang little soft low songs to herself, as the 
 
 I
 
 MOTHS. 69 
 
 swallows sing when they sit on the roof in mid- 
 summer. She had taken off her hat, the wind 
 lifted the weighty gold of her straight cut hair, 
 and blew the old brown holland skirt away from 
 her slender ankles. She began to look longingly 
 at the water, spreading away from her so far 
 and so far, and lying in delicious little cool 
 shallows amongst the stones. She could not 
 bathe, but she thought she might wade and 
 paddle. She took off her shoes and stockings, 
 and waded in. The rock pools were rather 
 deep, and the water rose above her ankles ; 
 those pretty roses, and lilacs, and feathery 
 hyacinths of the sea that science calls actinice, 
 uncurled their tufts of feathers, and spread out 
 their starry crowns, and lifted their tiny bells 
 around her ; broad riband weeds floated, crabs 
 waddled, little live shells sailed here and there, 
 and all manner oialgce, brown and red, were curl- 
 ing about the big stones. She was in paradise. 
 She had been reared on the edge of the sea 
 — the cold dark stern sea of the north, indeed, 
 but still the sea. This was only a quiet sunny 
 nook of the French coast of the Channel,
 
 70 MOTHS. 
 
 but it was charming from the silence, the sun- 
 shine, and the sweet liberty of the waters. 
 She thought she was miles away from everyone, 
 and therefore was duly obeying her mother's 
 sole command. There was not even a sail in 
 sight : quite far off was a cloud of dark boats, 
 which were the fishing cobles of Honfleur; 
 there was nothing else near, nothing but a 
 score of gulls, spreading their white wings, and 
 diving to catch the fish as they rose. 
 
 She waded on and on : filling an old creel 
 with seaweeds and seashells, for she was no 
 more than a child in a great many things. 
 The anemones she would not take, because she 
 had no means of keeping them in comfort. 
 She contented herself with standing nearly 
 knee deep, and gazing down on all their glories 
 seen through the glass of the still, sparkling 
 water. She sprang from stone to stone, from 
 pool to pool, forgetting Keziah seated on her 
 rock. Neither did she see a pretty little dingey 
 that was fastened to a stake amongst the 
 boulders. 
 
 The air was perfectly still 5 there was only
 
 MOTHS. 71 
 
 one sound, that of the incoming tide running 
 up and rij^pling over the pebbles. 
 
 Suddenly a voice from the waves, as it 
 seemed, began to chaunt parts of the Eequiem 
 of Mozart. It was a voice pure as a lark's, 
 rich as an organ's swell, tender as love's first 
 embrace, marvellously melodious, in a word, 
 that rarity which the earth is seldom blessed 
 enough to hear from more than one mortal 
 throat in any century : it was a perfectly beau- 
 tiful tenor voice. 
 
 Vere was standing in the water, struck 
 dumb and motionless; her eyes dilated, she 
 scarcely breathed, every fibre of her being, 
 everything in her, body and soul, seemed to 
 listen. She did not once wonder whence it 
 came ; the surpassing beauty and melody of it 
 held her too entranced. 
 
 Whether it were in the air, in the water, in 
 the sky, she never asked — one would have 
 seemed as natural to her as the other. 
 
 From the Requiem it passed with scarce a 
 pause to the impassioned songs of Gounod's 
 Bomeo. Whatever the future may say of
 
 72 MOTHS. 
 
 Gounod, this it will never be able to deny, that he 
 is the supreme master of the utterances of Love. 
 The passionate music rose into the air, bursting 
 upon the silence and into the sunlight, and 
 seeming to pierce the very heavens, then sink- 
 ing low and sweet and soft as any lover's sigh 
 of joy ; breaking off at last abruptly and leaving 
 nothing but the murmur of the sea. 
 
 The girl drew a great breathless cry, as if 
 something beautiful were dead, and stood quite 
 still, her figure mirrored in the shallows. 
 
 The singer came round from the projecting 
 ledge of the brown cliffs, uncovered his head 
 and bowed low, with apology for unwitting 
 intrusion on her solitude. 
 
 It was he whom Adrienne had called le 
 philtre d^amour. 
 
 Then the girl, who had been in heaven, 
 dropped to earth; and remembered her wet 
 and naked feet, and glanced down on them 
 with shame, and coloured as rosy-red as the 
 sea-flowers in the pool. 
 
 She threw an eager glance over the sands. 
 Alas ! she had forgotten her shoes and stockings.
 
 MOTHS. 73 
 
 and the place where they had been knew them 
 no more — the waves had rippled over them and 
 were tossing them, heaven could tell how near 
 or far away. 
 
 The ' sad leaden humanity/ which drags 
 us all to earth, brought her from the trance of 
 ecstasy to the very humblest prose of shame 
 and need. 
 
 ^I have lost them,' she murmured; and 
 then felt herself grow from rose to scarlet, as 
 the singer stood on the other side of the pool 
 gazing at her and seeing her dilemma with 
 amusement. 
 
 ' Your shoes and stockings, mademoiselle ? ' 
 
 He was so used to seeing pretty nude feet 
 at Trouville that it was impossible for him to 
 measure the awful character of the calamity in 
 the eyes of Vere. 
 
 ' Yes, I took them off; and I never dreamt 
 that anyone w^as here.' 
 
 ' Perhaps you have only forgotten where 
 you put them. Let me have the honour to 
 look for your lost treasures.' 
 
 Yere stood in her shallow, amongst the
 
 74 MOTHS, 
 
 riband weed, with, her liead hung down, and 
 the colour burning in her face. All her pride, 
 of which she had much, could not avail her liere. 
 She was nervously ashamed and unhappy. 
 
 . The new-comer searched ardently and inde- 
 fatigably, leaving no nook of rock or little 
 deposit of sea-water unexamined. He waded 
 in many places, and turned over the weed in 
 all, but it was in vain. The sea was many an 
 inch, deeper over the shore than when she had 
 first come, and her shoes and hose were doubt- 
 less drifting loose upon the waves : there was 
 no trace of them. 
 
 Unconscious of this tragedy enacting, 
 Keziah sat in the calm distance, a grey and 
 brown figure, facing the horizon. 
 
 Vere stood all the while motionless; the 
 sweet singing seeming still to throb and thrill 
 through the air around, and the sunny daylight 
 seeming to go round her in an amber mist, 
 through which she only saw her own two 
 naked feet, still covered in some sort with the 
 water and the weeds. 
 
 ' They are gone, mademoiselle ! ' said the
 
 MOTHS, 75 
 
 singer, coming to her with eyes that he made 
 most tender and persuasive. They were beau- 
 tiful eyes, that lent themselves with willingness 
 to this familiar office. 
 
 ' They must have been washed away by 
 the tide ; it is coming higher each moment. 
 Indeed, you must not remain where you are 
 or you will be surrounded very soon, and 
 carried off yourself. These channel tides are 
 treacherous and uncertain.' 
 
 ' I will go to my maid,' murmured Yere, 
 with a fawn-like spring from her stones to 
 others, forgetting in her shame to even thank 
 him for his services. 
 
 ' To that admirable person enthroned yon- 
 der ? ' said the singer of the songs. * But, 
 mademoiselle, there is the deep sea between 
 you and her already. Look ! ' 
 
 Indeed, so rapidly had the tide run in, and 
 the waters swelled up, that she was divided 
 from her attendant by a broad sheet of blue 
 shallows. Keziah, tired and sleepy from her 
 journeyings, was nodding unconsciously on her 
 throne of rocks.
 
 76 MOTHS. 
 
 ' And she will be drowned ! ' said Vere with 
 a piercing cry, and she began wading knee- 
 deep into the sea before her companion knew 
 what she was about. In a moment he had 
 caught her and lifted her back on to the firm 
 sand. 
 
 'Your good woman is in no danger, but 
 you cannot reach her so, and you will only 
 risk your own life, mademoiselle,' he said 
 gently. ' There is nothing to be alarmed about. 
 Shout to your attendant to take the path up 
 the cliffs — perhaps she would not understand 
 me — and we will take this road ; so we shall 
 meet on the top of this table-land that is now 
 above our heads. That is all. Shout loudly 
 to her.' 
 
 Vere was trembling, but she obeyed — she 
 had learned the too oft-forgotten art of obedience 
 at Bulmer Chase, and she shouted loudly till she 
 aroused Keziah, who awoke, rubbing her eyes, 
 and dreaming, no doubt, that she was in the 
 servants' hall at Bulmer. 
 
 When she understood what had happened 
 and what she was bidden to do, the stout
 
 MOTHS. 77 
 
 north countrywoman tucked up her petticoats, 
 and began to climb up the steep path with a 
 will, once assured that her young mistress 
 was out of all danger. The face of the cliff 
 soon hid her figure from sight, and Vere felfc 
 her heart sink strangely. 
 
 But she had no time to reflect, for the 
 stranger propelled her gently towards the worn 
 ridge in the rocks near them, a path which the 
 fisher-people had made incoming up and down. 
 
 'Let us mount quickly, mademoiselle. I 
 did not notice myself that the tide was so high. 
 Alas ! I fear the rocks will hurt your feet. 
 When we reach the first ledg^e you must wind 
 some grass round them. Come ! ' 
 
 Vere began to climb. The stones, and the 
 sand, and the rough dry weeds cut her feet 
 terribly, but these did not hurt her so much as 
 the idea that he saw her without shoes and 
 stockings. Reaching a ledge of stone he bade 
 her sit down, and tore up some broad grasses 
 and brought them to her, 
 
 ' Bind these about your feet,' he said kindly, 
 and turned his back to her. * Ah ! why will
 
 78 MOTHS. 
 
 you mind so much? Madame, your lovely 
 mother, dances about so for two or three hours 
 in the water-carnival every noonday ! ' 
 
 'Do jou know my mother?^ said Vera, 
 lifting her face, very hot and troubled from 
 winding the grass about her soles and insteps. 
 
 ' I have had that honour for many years in 
 Paris. You will have heard of me, perhaps. 
 I am a singer.' 
 
 Yere, for the first time, looked in his face, 
 and saw that it was the face whose beauty had 
 attracted her in the sunlight on the shore, 
 and whom Adrienne had called the philtre 
 d'amour. 
 
 ^ It was you who were singing, then ? ' she 
 said timidly, and thinking how beautiful and 
 how wonderful he was, this great artist, who 
 stood before her clothed in white, with the sun 
 shining in his luminous eyes. 
 
 'Yes. I came here to bathe and to swim, 
 and then run over some of the scores of a new 
 opera, that we shall have in Paris this winter, 
 of Ambroise Thomas's. One cannot study 
 in peace for ten minutes in Trouville, Yoi:t
 
 MOTHS. 79 
 
 love music, mademoiselle ? Oh ! you need not 
 speak : one always knows.' 
 
 'I never v/ent to any opera,' said Vere 
 Tinder her breath, resuming her climb up the 
 rock. 
 
 ^ Never ! May I sing to you then in the 
 first opera you hear ! Take care ; this path is 
 steep. Do not look back ; and catch at the 
 piles where the guindeaux hang. You need fear 
 nothing. I am behind you.' 
 
 Vere climbed on in silence ; the thick bands 
 of grass protected her feet in a measure, yet 
 it was hard and rough work. Young and 
 strong though she was, she was glad when 
 they reached the short grass on the head of 
 the cliffs and sank down on it, field-fares and 
 several birds of all kinds wheeling around her 
 in the grey clear air. 
 
 ' You are not faint ? ' he asked anxiously. 
 
 ' Oh no ! Only tired.' 
 
 ' Will you rest here ten minutes, and I will 
 come back to you ? ' 
 
 ' If you wish me.' 
 
 He smiled at the childish docility of the
 
 80 MOTHS. 
 
 answer and left her, whilst she leaned down on 
 the turf of the table-land, and gazed at the sea 
 far down below, and at the horizon where 
 many a white sail shone, and here and there 
 streamed the dark trail of a steamer's smoke. 
 She had forgotten Keziah for the moment ; 
 she was only hearing in memory those wonderful 
 tones, clear as a lark's song, rich as an organ's 
 swell, ringing over the waters in the silence. 
 
 In less than ten minutes he was back at 
 her side with a pair of little new wooden shoes 
 in his hand. 
 
 ' I thought these might save you from the 
 stones and dust a little. Mademoiselle Herbert,' 
 he said, ' and it is impossible to procure any 
 better kind in this village. Will you try them ? ' 
 
 She was grateful ; the little shoes were * a 
 child's size and fitted as if they had been the 
 glass slipper of Cinderella. 
 
 'You are very good,' she said timidly. 
 ' And how can you tell what my name is ? ' 
 
 ' I witnessed your arrival yesterday. Besides, 
 who has not heard of lovely Madame Dolly's 
 daughter ? '
 
 MOTHS. 81 
 
 Vere was silent. She vaguely wondered 
 why her mother was called Dolly by all men 
 whatever. 
 
 Suddenly, with a pang of conscience, she 
 remembered Keziah, and sprang up on her 
 sabots. Correze divined her impulse and her 
 thought. 
 
 ' Your good woman is quite safe,' he said ; 
 ' the peasants have seen her on the top of the 
 rocks, but she seems to have taken a wrong 
 path, and so it may be half-an-hour before we 
 overtake her. But do not be afraid or anxious. 
 I will see you safely homeward.' 
 Vere grew very pale. 
 
 'But mother made me promise to see no one.' 
 'Why?' 
 
 ' Because my dress is all wrong. And poor 
 Keziah ! — oh, how frightened she will be ! ' 
 
 'Not very. We shall soon overtake her. 
 Or, better still, I will send a lad after her while 
 we rest a little. Come and see my village, if 
 you can walk in your scibots. It is a village that 
 I have discovered, so I have the rights of Selkirk. 
 Come, if you are not too tired. Brava ! ' 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 MOTHS. 
 
 He cried 'brava ! ' because she walked so well 
 in her wooden shoes; and he saw that to please 
 him she was overcoming the ti midity which the 
 solitude of her situation awoke in her. 
 
 ' How can she be the daughter of that little 
 impudent /^e mouche V he thought. 
 
 Yere was shy but brave. Lady Dolly and 
 her sisterhood were audacious but cowardly. 
 
 He led her across the broad hard head of the 
 cliffs, mottled black and gray where the rock 
 broke through the grass, and thence across a 
 sort of rambling down with low furze-bushes 
 growing on it, further by a cart-track, where 
 cart-wheels had cut deep into the soil, to a little 
 cluster of houses, lying sheltered from the sea 
 winds by the broad bluff of the cliffs which rose 
 above them, and gathered under the shelter of 
 apple and cherry trees, with one great walnut 
 growing in the midst. 
 
 Ifc was a poor little village enough, with a 
 smell of tar from the fishing-nets and sails 
 spread out to dry, and shingle roofs held down 
 with stones, and little dusky close-shut pigeon- 
 holes for windows : but, in the memory of Yere
 
 MOTHS. 83 
 
 for ever afterwards, that little village seemed 
 even as Arcadia. 
 
 He had two wooden chairs brought out, and 
 a wooden table, and set them under the cherry- 
 trees, all reddened then with fruit. He had a 
 wooden bowl of milk, and honey, and brown 
 bread, and cherries, brought out too. There 
 were lavender and a few homely stocks and 
 wallflowers growing in the poor soil about the 
 fences of the houses ; bees hummed and swallows 
 cleft the air. 
 
 ' You are thirsty and hungry, I am sure,' he 
 said, and Yere, who had not learned to be 
 ashamed of such things, said with a smile, ' I am.' 
 
 He had reassured her as to Keziah, after 
 whom he had sent a fisher-boy. That the 
 fisher-boy would ever find Keziah he did not in 
 the least see any reason to believe ; but he did 
 not see any reason either why he should tell 
 Yere so, to make her anxious and disturbed. 
 The girl had such a lovely face, and her inno- 
 cence and seriousness pleased him. 
 
 'Are you sure the boy will soon find my 
 woman ? ' she asked him wistfully. 
 g2
 
 84 MOTHS. 
 
 'Quite sure/ he answered. 'He saw her 
 himself a little while ago on the top of the cliff 
 yonder. Do not be dismayed about that, and 
 find some appetite for this homely fare. I have 
 made requisitions like any Prussian, but the 
 result is poorer than T hoped it might be. Try 
 some cherries.' 
 
 The cherries were fine biggaroons, scarlet 
 and white, and Vere was still a child. She 
 drank her milk and ate them with keen relish. 
 The morning was growing warm as the sun 
 clomb higher in the heavens. She took off her 
 hat, and the wind lifted the thick hair falling 
 over her forehead; exertion and excitement had 
 brought a flush of colour in her cheeks; the 
 light and shade of the walnut leaves was above 
 her head ; little curly-headed children peeped 
 behind the furze fence and the sweetbriar 
 hedge ; white-capped old women looked on, 
 nodding and smiling ; the sea was out of sight, 
 but the sound and the scent of it came there. 
 
 ' It is an idyl,' thought her companion ; 
 idyls were not in his life, which was one of 
 mending triumphs, passions, and festivals,
 
 MOTHS. 85 
 
 dizzily mingled in a world which adored him. 
 Meanwhile it pleased him, if only by force of 
 novelty, and no incident on earth could ever 
 have found him unready. 
 
 ' You love music ? ' he cried to her. ^ Ah ! 
 now if we were but in Italy in that dark little 
 cottage there would sure to be a chitarra, and 
 1 would give you a serenade to your cherries ; 
 perhaps without one — why not, if you like it ? 
 But first. Mademoiselle Herbert, I ought to tell 
 you who I am.' 
 
 ' Oh ! I know,' said Yere, and lifted her soft 
 eyes to him with a cherry against her lips. 
 
 'Indeed?' 
 
 'Yes, I saw you on the plage yesterday, 
 and Adrienne told me. You are Correze.' 
 
 She said the name tenderly and reverently, 
 for his fame had reached her in her childhood, 
 and she had often thought to herself, ' If only 
 I could hear Correze once ! ' 
 
 He smiled caressingly. 
 
 ' I am glad that you cared to ask. Yes, I 
 am Correze, that is certain ; and perhaps 
 Correze would be the name of a greater artist
 
 86 MOTHS. 
 
 if the world had not spoilt him— yonr mamma's 
 world, mademoiselle. Well, my life is very 
 happy, and very gay and glad, and after all 
 the fame of the singer can never be but a 
 breath, a sound through a reed. When our 
 lips are once shut there is on us for ever eternal 
 silence. Who can remember a summer-breeze 
 when it has passed by, or tell in any aftertime 
 how a laugh or a sigh sounded ? ' 
 
 His face grew for the moment sad and over- 
 cast — that beautiful face which had fascinated 
 the eyes of the girl as it had done the gaze 
 of multitudes in burning nights of enthusiasm 
 from Neva to Tagus, from Danube to Seine. 
 
 Vere looked at him and did not speak. The 
 gaze of Correze had a magic for all women, and 
 she vaguely felt that magic as she met those 
 eyes that were the eyes of Eomeo and of Faust. 
 
 ' What a lovely life it must be, your life,' 
 she said timidly. ' It must be like a perpetual 
 poem, I think.' 
 
 Correze smiled. 
 
 ' An artist's life is far off what you fancy it, 
 I fear ; but yet at the least it is full of colour
 
 MOTHS. 87 
 
 and of cliange. I am in the snows of Russia 
 one day, in the suns of Madrid another. I 
 know the life of the palaces, I have known the 
 life of the poor. When I forget the latter may 
 heaven forget me ! Some day when we are 
 older friends, Mademoiselle Herbert, I will tell 
 you my story.' 
 
 ' Tell me now,' said Yere softly, with her 
 gaze beginning to grow intent and eager under 
 the halo of her hair, and letting her cherries 
 lie unheeded on her lap. 
 
 Correze laughed. 
 
 ' Oh, you will be disappointed. I have not 
 much of one, and it is no secret. I am Eaphael 
 de Correze ; I am the Marquis de Correze if it 
 were of any use to be so ; but I prefer to be 
 Correze the singer. It is much simpler, and 
 yet much more uncommon. There are so many 
 marquises, so few tenors. My race was great 
 amongst the old noblesse de Savoie, but it was 
 beggared in the Terror, and their lands were 
 confiscated and most of their lives were taken. 
 I was born in a cabin ; my grandfather had been 
 born in a castle ; it did not matter. He was a
 
 88 MOTHS. 
 
 philosopher and a scholar, and he had taken to 
 the mountains and loved them. My father 
 married a peasant girl, and lived as simply as a 
 shepherd. My mother died early. I ran about 
 barefoot and saw to the goats. We were on the 
 Yalais side of the Pennine Alps. I used to 
 drive the goats up higher, higher, higher, as the 
 summer drew on, and the grass was eaten down. 
 In the winter an old priest, who lived with us, 
 and my father, when he had leisure, taught 
 me. We were very poor and often hungry, but 
 they were happy times. I think of them when 
 I go across the Alps wrapped up in my black 
 sables that the Empress of Eussia has given me. 
 I think I was warmer in the old days with the 
 snow ten feet deep all around ! Can you under- 
 stand that snow may be warmer than sables ? 
 Yes? Well, there is little to tell. One day, when 
 it was summer, and travellers were coming up 
 into the Pennine valleys, some one heard me 
 sing, and said my voice was a fortune. I was 
 singing to myself and the goats among the 
 gentian, the beautiful blue gentian — you know 
 it ? No, you do not know it, unless you have
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 roamed the Alps in May. Other persons came 
 after him and said the same thing, and wanted 
 me to go with them; but I would 'not leave my 
 father. Who could stack wood for him, 
 and cut j)3;ths through the snow, and rake 
 up the chestnuts and store them? I did all 
 that. I would not go. When I was fifteen he 
 died. ' Do not forget you are the last Marquis 
 de Correze,' he said to me with his last 
 breath. He had never forgotten it, and he 
 had lived and died in the shadow of the Alps 
 an honest man and a gentleman in his 
 mountain hut. I passed the winter in great 
 pain and trouble : it had been in the autumn 
 that he had died. I could not resolve whether 
 it would displease him in his grave under the 
 snow that a Correze should be a singer ; yet a 
 singer I longed to be. With the spring I said 
 to myself that after all one could be as loyal a 
 gentleman as a singer as a soldier ; why not ? 
 I rose up and walked down to the bottom of our 
 ravine, where twice a week the diligences for 
 Paris run ; I found one going on the road ; I 
 went by it, and went on and on until I entered
 
 90 MOTHS. 
 
 Paris. All ! that entry into Paris of the boy 
 with an artist's ambition and a child's faith in 
 destiny ! Why have they never written a 
 poem on it ? Once in Paris my path was easy ; 
 my voice made me friends. I went to Italy, I 
 studied, I was heard, I returned to my dear 
 Paris and triumphed. Well, I have been 
 happy ever since. It is very much to say; 
 and yet sometimes I long for the old winter 
 nights, roasting the chestnuts, with the wall of 
 snow outside ! ' 
 
 Yere had listened with eloquent dim eyes, 
 and a fast beating heart; her cherries lying 
 still uneaten on her lap. She gave a little 
 quiet sigh as his voice ceased. 
 
 ' You feel so about it because your father 
 is dead,' she said very low, under her 
 breath. 'If he were here to know all your 
 triumphs ' 
 
 Correze bent down and touched her hand, 
 as it hung forward over her knee, with his lips. 
 It was a mere habitual action of graceful cour- 
 tesy with him, but it gave the child a strange 
 thrill. She had never seen those tender easy
 
 MOTHS. 91 
 
 ceremonies of the South. He saw that he had 
 troubled her, and was sorry. 
 
 ' Eat your cherries, Mademoiselle Herbert, 
 and I will sing you a song,' he said gaily, 
 dropping a cherry into his own mouth, and he 
 began to hum in his perfect melodious notes 
 odds and ends of some of the greatest music of 
 the world. 
 
 Then he sang with a voice only raised to 
 one tenth of its power, the last song of Fer- 
 nando, his lips scarcely parting as he sang, and 
 his eyes looking away to the yellow gorse and 
 the sheep-cropped grass, and the drifting 
 clouds ; giving to the air and sea what he often 
 refused to princes. 
 
 For the great tenor Correze was a prince 
 himself in his caprices. 
 
 The i)erfect melody that held multitudes 
 enthralled, and moved whole cities to ecstasies, 
 that dissolved queens in tears and made women 
 weep like little children, was heard on the still 
 sunny silence of the cliffs with only a few babies 
 tumbling in the sandy grass, and an old woman 
 or two sitting spinning at her door. Down in
 
 93 MOTHS. 
 
 gaj Trouville all his worshippers could not woo 
 from hi in a note ; the entreaties that were 
 commands found him obdurate and left him 
 indifferent ; and he sang here to the lark that 
 was singing over his head, because a girl of 
 sixteen had lost her shoes and stockings, and 
 he wished to console her. 
 
 When once the voice left his lips he sang 
 on, much as the lark did, softly and almost 
 unconsciously ; the old familiar melodies fol- 
 lowing one another unbidden, as in his child- 
 hood he had used to sing to the goats with the 
 flush of the Alpine roses about his feet, and 
 the snow above his head. 
 
 The lark dropped, as though owning itself 
 vanquished, into the hollow, where its consort's 
 lowly nest was made. Correze ceased suddenly 
 to sing, and looked at his companion. Yere 
 was crying. 
 
 ' Ah ! my beautiful angel ! ' said an old 
 peasant woman to him, standing close against 
 the furze fence to listen ; ' do you come out of 
 paradise to tell us we are not quite forgot 
 there ? '
 
 MOTHS. 93 
 
 Yere said nothing ; she only turned on him 
 her great soft eyes whilst the tears were falling 
 unchecked down her cheeks. 
 
 ' Mademoiselle/ said Correze, ' I have had 
 flattery in my time, and more than has been 
 good for me ; but who ever gave me such sweet 
 flattery as yours ? ' 
 
 ' Flattery ! ' murmured Vere. ' I did not 
 mean — oh ! how can you say that ? The woman 
 is right — it is as if it came from the angels ! ' 
 
 'By a servant of angels most unworthy, 
 then,' said Correze, with a smile and a sigh. 
 'As for the woman — good mother, here is a 
 gold piece that carries Paradise in it ; or, at 
 least men think so. But I am afraid, myself, 
 ♦that by the time we have found the gold pieces 
 we have most of us forgotten the way to Para- 
 dise.' 
 
 Yere was silent. She was still very pale ; 
 the tears stood on her lashes as the rain stands 
 on the fringes of the dark passion-flower after 
 a storm. 
 
 'Tell me your name, my angel,' said the 
 old woman, with her hand on the coin.
 
 94 MOTHS, 
 
 ^ Kaphael.' 
 
 ' I will pray to St. Raphael for you ; if 
 indeed you be not lie ? ' 
 
 'Nay; I am not he. Pray always, good 
 soul; it is pleasant to think that some one prays 
 for us. Those cries cannot all be lost.' 
 
 'Have you none to love you? ' said the old 
 woman. ' That is odd, for you are beautiful.' 
 
 ' I have many to love me — in a way. But 
 none to pray that I know of — that is another 
 affair. Mother, did you see that lark that sang 
 on against me, and dropped to its nest at last? ' 
 
 ' I saw it.' 
 
 ' Then have a heed that the boys do not 
 stone, and the trappers net it.' 
 
 ' I will. What is your fancy ? ' 
 
 ' It is a little brother.' 
 
 The peasant woman did not understand, but 
 she nodded three times. 'The lark shall be 
 safe as a king in his court. The jolot he is in 
 is mine. When you want a thing say to women 
 you wish it — you do not want to say anything 
 else.' 
 
 Correze laughed, ajid pulled down a rose from
 
 MOTHS. 95 
 
 behind the sweetbriar. He held it out to 
 Yere. 
 
 ' If there were only a single rose here and 
 there upon earth, men and women would pass 
 their years on their knees before its beauty. I 
 wonder sometimes if human ingratitude for 
 beauty ever hurts God? One might fancy even 
 Deity wounded by neglected gifts. What do 
 you say ? ' 
 
 He plucked a little lavender and some sea- 
 pinks, and wound them together with the rose. 
 
 ' When the fools throw me flowers they hurt 
 me; it is barbarous,' he said. 'To throw laurel 
 has more sense ; there is a bitter smell in it, 
 and it carries a sound allegory ; but flowers ! — 
 flowers thrown in the dust, and dying in the 
 gas-glare ! The little live birds thrown at 
 Carnival are only one shade worse. Ah ! here 
 is the lad that I sent to find your waiting- 
 woman.' 
 
 The rose, the song, the magical charm 
 seemed all dissolved before Vere as by the 
 speaking of some disenchanter's spell : the hard- 
 ness and fearfulness of prosaic fact faced her.
 
 96 MOTliS. 
 
 The fisher-lad explained that he had been 
 miles in search of the good woman, but he had 
 not found her. Men he had lately met had 
 told him they had seen such a figure running 
 hard back to the town. 
 
 'What shall I do?' she murmured aloud. 
 ' I have been forgetting all the trouble that I 
 have been to you. Show me the way back — 
 only that — I can find it — I can go alone. 
 Indeed I can, M. de Correze.' 
 
 ' Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind,' 
 said Corr^ze. ' Your woman is quite safe, you 
 see, so you need fear nothing for her. No 
 doubt she thinks you have gone that way home. 
 Mademoiselle Herbert, if you will listen to me, 
 you will not distress yourself, but let me take 
 you in my little boat that is down there to 
 Trouville. It is impossible that you should walk 
 in those wooden shoes, and carriage or even 
 cart there is none here. Come, it is half-past 
 nine only now. The sun is still temperate ; the 
 sea is smooth. Come, I will row you home in 
 an hour.' 
 
 ' But I have been such a trouble to you.'
 
 MOTHS. 97 
 
 ' May I never have worse burdens ! ' 
 ' And my mother will be so angry.' 
 * Will she ? Madame Dolly, a mother and 
 angry ! I cannot picture it ; and I thought I 
 knew her in every phase. My child, do not be 
 so troubled about nothing. We will drift back 
 slowly and pleasantly, and you shall be in your 
 mother's house before noon strikes. And 
 everyone knows me. That is one of the uses of 
 notoriety ; it has many drawbacks, so it need 
 have some compensations. Come. I rowed 
 myself out here. I studied music a year in 
 Yenice when I was a lad, and learned rowing 
 on the Lido from the fruit-girls. Come.' 
 
 She did not resist much more ; she thought 
 that he must know best. With the grey 
 lavender and the rose at her throat, she went 
 away from under the cherry trees ; the old 
 woman in her blue gown gave them her bless- 
 ing; the lark left his nest and began to sing 
 again ; the sunny hour was over, the black 
 steep head of the cliffs was soon between them 
 and the little hamlet. 
 
 They walked down by an easier way to the 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 MOTHS. 
 
 shore. The little boat was rockhig on a high 
 tide. 
 
 * Can yon steer ? ' said Correze. 
 
 ' Oh, yes/ said Yere, who was learned in 
 all sailing and boating, after a childhood passed 
 by the rough grey waters of an iron coast. 
 
 He took the oars, and she the ropes. The 
 sea was smooth, and there was no wind, not 
 even a ruffle in the air ; the boat glided slowly 
 and evenly along. 
 
 He talked and laughed, he amused and be- 
 guiled her ; he told her stories ; now and then 
 he sang low sweet snatches of Venetian boat- 
 songs and rowing chaunts of the Lombard 
 lakes and of the Riviera gnlfs and bays ; the 
 sun was still cool ; the sea looked blue to her 
 eyes which had never beheld the Mediterranean. 
 There were many craft in sight, pleasure and 
 fishing vessels, and farther away large ships ; 
 but nothing drew near them save one old coble 
 going in to Etretat from the night's dredging. 
 It was an enchanted voyage to Yere, as the 
 hamlet on the clitFs, and the homely lavender, 
 and the cabbage rose, had been all enchanted
 
 MOTHS, 99 
 
 things. She was in a dream. She wondered 
 if she were really living. As she had never 
 read but great and noble books, she thought 
 vaguely of the Faerie Queen and of the Fata 
 Morgana. And through the sunlight against 
 the sea, she saw as in a golden halo the beauti- 
 ful brillant dreamy face of Correze. 
 
 At last the voyage was done. 
 
 The little boat grated against the sands of 
 Trouville, and against the side of a yacht's gig 
 waiting there with smart sailors in white jerseys 
 and scarlet caps, with ' Ei^hemeris ' in large 
 blue letters woven on their shirts. 
 
 It was still early, earlier than it was usual 
 for the fashionable idleness of the place to be 
 upon the shore ; and Correze had hoped to run 
 his boat in on land unnoticed. But, as the 
 crankiness of fate would have it, several people 
 had been wakened before their usual hour. 
 The yachts of a great channel race, after having 
 been all night out towards the open ocean, had 
 hove in sight on their homeward tack, and were 
 objects of interest, as heavy bets were on them. 
 Correze, to his annoyance, saw several skiffs and 
 
 H2
 
 100 MOTHS. 
 
 canoes already oui upon the water round him, 
 and several poppy-coloured and turquoise- 
 coloured stripes adorning the bodies of human 
 beings, and moving to and fro, some on the 
 sand, some in the surf, some in the deeper sea. 
 
 There was no help for it, he saw, but to run 
 the boat in, and trust to chance to take his 
 companion unnoticed across the few hundred 
 yards that separated the shore from the Httle 
 house of Lady Dolly. 
 
 But chance chose otherwise. 
 
 As he steered through the still shallow 
 water, and ran the boat up on the sand, there 
 were some human figures, like gaily painted 
 pegtops, immediately swarming down towards 
 him, and amongst them Lady Dolly herself; 
 Lady Dolly with a penthouse-like erection of 
 straw above her head to keep the sun off, and 
 her body tightly encased in black and yellow 
 stripes, till she looked like a wasp — if a wasp 
 had ever possessed snowy arms quite bare and 
 bare white legs. 
 
 Correze gave his hand to Yere to alight, 
 and she set her little wooden shoes upon the
 
 MOTH&. 101 
 
 dusty shore, and did not looli up. The golden 
 clouds seemed all about her still, and she was 
 wondering what she could ever say to him to 
 thank him enough for all his care. 
 
 A peal of shrill laughter pierced her ear 
 and broke her musing. 
 
 ' Correze, what nj^nph or naiad have you 
 found ? A mermaid in sabots ! Oh ! oh ! oh ! ' 
 
 The laughter pealed and shrieked, as 
 fashionable ladies' laughter will, more often 
 than is pretty ; and then, through the laughter 
 she heard her mother's voice. 
 
 ' Ah — ha ! Correze ! So this is why you 
 steal away from supper when the daylight 
 comes ? ' 
 
 Correze, surrounded by the swarming and 
 parti-coloured pegtops, lifted his head, com- 
 prehended the situation, and bowed to the 
 ground. 
 
 'I have had the honour and happiness, 
 madame, to be of a slight service to Mademoi- 
 selle Herbert.' 
 
 The group of pegtops was composed of 
 Lady Dolly, the Princesse Helene, a Princess
 
 102 MOTES. 
 
 Zephine, three other ladies, and several gentle- 
 men, just come to the edge of the- sea to^ 
 bathe. 
 
 Vere gave one amazed glance at her mother 
 and blushed scarlet. The glance and the 
 blush were not for the shame of her own 
 misdoing ; they were for the shame of her 
 mother's attire. Yere, who had been over- 
 whelmed with confusion at the loss of her 
 shoes, was very far from comprehending the 
 state of feeling which adopts a fashionable 
 swimming costume as perfect propriety, and 
 skips about in the surf hand in hand with a 
 male swimmer, the cynosure of five hundred 
 eye-glasses and lorgnons. 
 
 She had seen the bathing-dress indeed, but 
 though she had perceived that it was legless 
 and armless, she had imagined that something 
 must be worn with it to supplement those 
 deficiencies, and she had not in any way 
 reckoned the full enormity of it as it had hung 
 limp over the back of a chair. 
 
 But on her mother ! 
 
 As the group of living human pegtops 
 swarmed before her on the edge of the sea, and
 
 MOTHS. 103 
 
 she realised that it was actually her mother, 
 actually her dead father's wife, who was before 
 her, with those black and yellow stripes for all 
 her covering, Vere felfc her cheeks and brow 
 burn all over as with fire. Tliey thought she 
 was blushing with shame at herself, but 
 she was blushing for shame for them, and 
 those tight-drawn rainbow-coloured stripes that 
 showed every line of the form more than the 
 kilted skirts and scant rags of the fislier-girls 
 ever showed theirs. If it were right to come 
 down to dance about in the water with half-a- 
 dozen men around, Low could that which she 
 had done herself be so very wrong ? The sea and 
 the sands and the sky seemed to go round with 
 her. She was only conscious of the anger 
 sparkling from her mother's eyes ; she did not 
 heed the tittering and the teasing with which 
 the other ladies surrounded her companion. 
 
 * Vere ! ' — Lady Dolly for the moment said 
 nothing more. She stood blankly staring at 
 her daughter, at the sunburnt hat, the tumbled 
 hair, the wooden shoes ; and at the figure of 
 Correze against the sun. 
 
 ' You — with Correze 1 ' she cried at length j
 
 104 MOTHS. 
 
 and Correze, studying her pretty little face, 
 thou gilt h VN evil pretty women could some- 
 times look. 
 
 ' Mademoiselle Herbert had lost her maid, 
 and her roadj and her shoes,' he hastened to 
 say with his most charming grace ; ' I have 
 been happy enough to be of a little — too little 
 — service to her. The fault was none of hers, 
 but all of the tide ; and, save the loss of the 
 shoes, there is no mischief done.' 
 
 *M. Correze has wasted his morning for 
 me, and has been so very kind,' said Yere. 
 Her voice was very low, but it was steady. 
 She did not think she had done any wrong, 
 but she felt bewildered, and was not quite sure. 
 
 Her mother laughed very irritably. 
 
 ' Correze is always too kind, and always a 
 "preux chevalier. What on earth have you been 
 doing, darling ? and where are your women ? 
 and however could you be so quite too dread- 
 fully foolish. I suppose you think life is like 
 Alice in Wonderland ? Jack, see her home, 
 will you ? and join us at the yacht and lock 
 her up in her room, and the German with her.
 
 MOTHS. 106 
 
 How good of jou, dear Correze, to bore your- 
 self with a troublesome child. If it were 
 anybody else except you who had come ashore 
 like this with my Vera I should feel really too 
 anxious and angry. But, with you ' 
 
 * Madame ! I am too fortunate ! If you 
 deem me to be of any use, however, let me 
 claim as a guerdon, permission to attend 
 mademoiselle your daughter to her home.' 
 
 * Jack, see her home, pray. Do you hear 
 me,' said Lady Dolly again, sharply. 'No — 
 not you, Correze — you are qnite too charming 
 to be trusted. Jack's like an old woman.' 
 
 The Princesse Helene smiled at the Princess 
 Zephine. 
 
 If old women are thirty years old, hand- 
 some in a fair bold breezy fashion, and six feet 
 three in height, then was Lord Jura like them. 
 He had come ashore from the ' Ephemeris,' 
 and was the only one of the party decently clad. 
 
 * Why should she go home ? ' muttered Jura, 
 * why may she not come with us — eh ? ' 
 
 'Out of the question,' said Lady Dolly, 
 very sharply.
 
 106 MOTHS. 
 
 He was a silent man; he said nothing 
 now ; he strode off silently to Vere's side, lifting 
 his straw hat a little, in sign of his acceptance 
 of his devoir. 
 
 Yere made an inclination to her mother and 
 the other ladies, with the somewhat stately 
 deference that had been imposed on her at 
 Bulmer Chase, and began to move toward the 
 Chalet Ludoff, whose green blinds and gilded 
 scroll balconies were visible in the distance. 
 Correze bowed very low with his own matchless 
 grace and ease, and began to follow them. 
 
 ' No ; not you Correze ; T cannot permit it. 
 You are too fascinating — infinitely too fasci- 
 nating — to play chaperon,' cried Lady Dolly 
 once more. ' Yera, when you get home go to 
 your room, and stay there till I come. You 
 have had enough liberty to-day, and have 
 abused it shamefully.' 
 
 Having screamed that admonition on the 
 air. Lady Dolly turned to her friends the 
 feminine pegtops, and entreated them not to 
 think too badly of her naughty little puss — she 
 was so young !
 
 MOTHS. 107 
 
 In a few moments all the pegtops had 
 jumped into the water, and the young Due de 
 Dinant was teaching Lady Dolly to execute 
 in the waves a new dance just introduced in an 
 operetta of Messieurs Meilhac and Herve; a 
 dance that required prodigious leaps and pro- 
 duced boisterous laughter. Vere did not look 
 back once ; she felt very ashamed still, but not 
 of herself. 
 
 Jura did not address a word to her, except 
 when they had approached the steps of the 
 Chalet LudofiP; then he said, somewhat sheep- 
 ishly, — ' I say — if she's nasty don't you mind. 
 She can be ; but it soon blows over ' 
 
 Yere was silent. 
 
 ' Won't you come out to-day,' he pursued. 
 ' I do so wish you would. It's my tub, you 
 know, and you would like it. Do come ? ' 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 ' On my yacht. We are going to picnic at 
 Villiers. The Grand Duchess is coming, and 
 she is great fun, when she aren't too drunk. 
 Why shouldn't you come? It seems to me 
 you are shut up like a nun. It's not fair.'
 
 108 MOTES. 
 
 ^ My mother does not wish me to come any- 
 where/ said Vere dreamily, heeding him very 
 little. ' There is the house. Go back to them, 
 Lord Jura. Thanks.' 
 
 Jura went back ; but not until he had sent 
 her up a pretty little breakfast, and the most 
 innocent of his many French novels. 
 
 *It is a beastly shame,' he said, as he 
 walked towards the swimmers over the sands. 
 
 Correze, meanwhile, who had resisted all 
 entreaties to bathe, and all invitations to pass 
 the day on the ' Ephemeris,' wended his way 
 slowly towards his hotel. 
 
 ' She has claws, that pretty cat,' he said to 
 himself, thinking of Lady Doll3^ He had 
 never very much liked her, and he detested her 
 now in a petulant impetuous way that now 
 and then broke up the sunny softness of his 
 temper. 
 
 * How sweet she is now ; sweet as the sweet- 
 briar, and as healthy,' he thought to himself. 
 * How clear the soul, how clear the eyes ! If 
 only that would last ! But one little year in 
 the world, and it will be all altered. She will
 
 MOTSS. 109 
 
 have gained some chic, no doubt, and some 
 talent and tact; she ^ill wear high-heeled 
 shoes, and she will have drawn in her waist, 
 and learned how to porter le seiri en offrande, 
 and learned how to make those grand grej 
 eyes look languid, and lustrous, and terrible. 
 Oh, yes, she will have learned all that. But 
 then, alas ! alas ! she will have learned so 
 much too. She will have learned what the 
 sickly sarcasms mean, and the wrapt-up pruri- 
 encies intend, and what women and men are 
 worth, and how politics are knavish tricks, and 
 the value of a thing is just as much as it will 
 bring, and all the rest of the dreary gospel of 
 self. What a pity ! what a pity ! But it is 
 always so. I dare say she will never stoop to 
 folly as her pretty mother does ; but the bloom 
 will go. She will be surprised, shocked, pained ; 
 then, little by little, she will get used to it 
 all— they all do — and then the world will have 
 her, body and soul, and perhaps will put a bit 
 of ice where that tender heart now beats. She 
 will be a great lady, I dare say — a very great 
 lady — nothing worse, very likely ; but, all the
 
 110 MOTHS. 
 
 same, my sweetbriar will be withered, and my 
 wliite wild rose will be dead — and what will it 
 matter to me ? I dare say I shall be a musical 
 box with a broken spring, lying in a dust of 
 dried myrtle and musty laurels ! ' 
 
 Lady Dolly danced, floated, bobbed like a 
 cork, drifted languidly with her arms above her 
 head, dived, and disappeared with only the 
 rosy soles of her feet visible — did everything 
 that a pretty woman and a good swimmer can 
 do in shallow smooth water, with no breeze to 
 mar her comfort. But she was in a very bad 
 temper all the time. 
 
 Jura did not improve it, when she came out 
 of the water, by asking her, again, to let her 
 daughter go with them in the ' Ephemeris.' 
 
 ' An grand jamais I ' said Lady Dolly, quite 
 furiously. ' After such an exhibition of herself 
 with a singer ! Are you mad ? ' 
 
 She went home furious ; changed her wet 
 stripes for a yachting dress in sullen silence; 
 refused to see the German governess, or to 
 allow Yere's door to be opened till she should 
 returu in the evening, and went down to the
 
 MOTES. Ill 
 
 yacht in a state of great irritation, with a 
 charming costume, all white serge and navy 
 blue satin, with anchor buttons in silver, and a 
 Norwegian belt hung with everything that the 
 mind of man could imagine as going on to a 
 girdle. 
 
 The * Ephemeris ' was one of the best yachts 
 on the high seas ; had a good cook, wonderful 
 wines, a piano, a library, a cabin of rosewood 
 and azure, and deck hammocks of silk. Never- 
 theless everything seemed to go wrong on 
 board of her that day — at least to Lady Dolly. 
 They got becalmed, and stuck stupidly still, 
 while the steam yachts were tearing ahead in 
 a cruel and jeering manner; then the sea got 
 rough all in a moment ; the lobster salad dis- 
 agreed with her, or something did ; a spiteful 
 stiff wind rose ; and the Grand Duchess bor- 
 rowed her cigarette case and never returned 
 it, and of course could not be asked for it, and 
 it contained the only verbena-scented papelitos 
 that there were on board. Then Jura was too 
 attentive to the comfort of another woman, or 
 she fancied, at any rate, that he was; and
 
 112 MOTHS. 
 
 none of her especial pets were there, so she 
 could not make reprisals as she wished; and 
 Correze had obstinately and obdurately refused 
 to come at all. Not that she cared a straw 
 about Correze, but she hated being refused. 
 
 ' What a wax you're in, Dolly ! ' said Lord 
 Jura, bringing her some iced drinks and 
 peaches. 
 
 ' When I've had three mad people sent to 
 me ! ' she cried in a rage. ' And I'll be obliged 
 to you, Jack, not to use slang to we.' 
 
 Lord Jura whistled and went aft. 
 
 ' What a boor he grows ! ' thought Lady 
 Dolly ; and the ' Ephemeris ' was pitching, and 
 she hated pitching, and the little Due de Dinant 
 was not on board because Jack wouldn't have 
 him; and she felt ill-used, furious, wretched, 
 and hated the cook for making the lobster 
 salad, and Yere for having been born. 
 
 ' A boy wouldn't have been half so bad,' she 
 thought. ' He'd have been always away, and 
 they'd have put him in the army. But a girl ! 
 It's all very easy to say marry her, but she 
 hasn't any money, and the Mull people won't
 
 MOTHS. ]]3 
 
 give her any, and mj own people can't, and as 
 for Mr. Vanderdecken, one miglit as well try to 
 get blood out of a flint ; and they may say what 
 they like, but all men want money when they 
 marry nowadays, even when they've got heaps 
 more than they know what to do with them- 
 selves. What a horrid woman the Grand 
 Duchess is. She's drunk already, and it isn't 
 three o'clock ! ' 
 
 ' She's going splendidly now,' said Jura, 
 meaning the ' Ephemeris,' that plunged and 
 reared as if she were a mare instead of a 
 schooner ; and the fresh sou'easter that had 
 risen sent her farther and farther westward 
 towards the haze of distant seas. 
 
 * I believe we're going straight to America ! 
 what idiocy is ^yachting ! ' said Lady Dolly 
 savagely, as the wind tore at her tiny multi- 
 tudinous curls. 
 
 Meanwhile, Vere, in religious obedience, had 
 gone to the little chamber that was called by 
 courtesy at the Chalet Ludoff a study, and 
 submitting to be locked in, remained happy in 
 the morning's golden dream of sunshine, of song, 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 314 MOTHS. 
 
 of the sea, of the summer. She had found her 
 lost Northumbrian safe, but in agonies of terror 
 and self-reproa,ch, 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 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 beau- 
 tiful 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
 
 MOTHS. 115 
 
 into the prison-chamber, but Vere 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 vv'eeping, and be- 
 lieving that the heavens would fall. Vere, with 
 her hands clasped behind her head, leaned back 
 and watched the wliite clouds come and go 
 above the sea, and fancied the air was still full 
 of that marvellous and matchless voice which 
 had told her a!: last a.11 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 ! ' 
 12
 
 116 MOTHS. 
 
 Yere roused herself with a start, and saw 
 the arm of Correze leaning on the balcony and 
 his eyes looking at her ; he was standing 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 1 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 Yienna, 
 to Moscow, to Petersburgh ; 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 
 Yere ; 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, altro ! ' laughed Correze, lifting him- 
 self a little higher, and leaning more easily on
 
 MOTHS. 117 
 
 the iron of tlie 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 beauti- 
 ful stranger who had come to her with the 
 morning sun. 
 
 * Mademoiselle Herbert,' continued Correze, 
 ' I shall sound like a preacher, and I am but a 
 graceless singer, but try and keep yourself " un- 
 spotted from the world." Those are holy words, 
 and I am not a holy speaker, but try and re- 
 member 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
 
 118 MOTHS. 
 
 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 contemp- 
 tible. 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 amusement and an idiotic imita- 
 tion 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 suc- 
 ceed. 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
 
 MOTHS. 119 
 
 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 knowledge first comes ! Mon enfant, 
 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 blossoms 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. 
 
 Correze was gone.
 
 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 wile 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 immeasur- 
 able 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
 
 MOTHS. 121 
 
 allay her rage with making some one uncom- 
 fortable. 
 
 'Are you sufficiently ashamed of yourself, 
 Vera? ' she said as she entered. 
 
 Yere rose, rather uneasily, and with soft sad 
 dewy eyes. 
 
 ' Why should I be ashamed mother ? ' she 
 said simply. 
 
 ' Why ? why ? you ask why ? after com- 
 promising yourself, as you did this morning? ' 
 
 ' Compromise ? ' 
 
 Yere had never heard the word. Women 
 who were compromised 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 ! ' 
 
 Yere 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.'
 
 122 MOTHS. 
 
 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 ! ' 
 
 Yere'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 Yere softly ; hearing all around 
 her as she spoke the sweet liquid melody of 
 that perfect voice which had called the sky- 
 lark ' a little brother.' 
 
 '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 s^pent alone with him. It was madness,
 
 MOTES. 123 
 
 Vera ; and it was worse, it was forward, impu- 
 dent, unmaidenly 1 ' 
 
 The girl's pale face flushed ; she lifted lier 
 head with a certain indignant pride. 
 
 ' You must saj what jou 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 looTcs I I believe 
 everybody says you had come from Havre with 
 Correze ! ' 
 
 Yere 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 Yere. 
 
 ' Correze ? Whilst I was away ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. He spoke to me at the balcony.' 
 
 'Well, my dear, you do Bulmer credit!
 
 124 MOTES, 
 
 No Spanisli or Italian heroine out of his own 
 operas could conduct herself more audaciously 
 on the first day of her liberty. It is certainly 
 what I always thought would come of your 
 grandmother's mode of education. Well, go 
 upstairs in your bedroom and do not leave it 
 until I send for you. N'o, you can't take 
 flowers upstairs ; they are very unwholesome — 
 as unwholesome as the kindness of Correze.' 
 
 Yere went, wistfully regarding her treasures; 
 but she had kept the faded rose and the laven- 
 der 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 ; pro- 
 bably I shall never come back here.'
 
 MOTHS. 125 
 
 Tlie official bowed, obedient. 
 
 As she passed through her drawing-rooms 
 Lady Dolly took up the bouquet of Correze 
 and went to her o^vn 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. 
 
 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
 
 126 MOTHS. 
 
 her swan's-down about her and got into her 
 carriage, 
 
 'Now, on my sonl, 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 highborn 
 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 ! 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 w^ith coloured lamps 
 and had musicians hidden in shrubberies, dis- 
 coursing sweet sounds to rival the nightingales. 
 The light was subdued, the air delicious, the
 
 MOTHS. 127 
 
 sea glimmered pliosplioresceiit and starlit at 
 tlie end of dusk^^ alleys and rose-lmng walks. 
 Lady Dolly wandered about with Sergius 
 Zouroff and otliers, and felt quite romantic, 
 wliilst Jolm Jnra yawned and sulked; she 
 never allowed him to do anything else while 
 she was amusing herself. 
 
 Correze joined her and 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 exquisite as 
 your young daughter. Will you believe that I 
 mean no compliment when I say so ? ' 
 
 ' My deal' Correze ! She is only a child ! ' 
 
 ' She is not a child. What would you say.
 
 128 MOTHS. 
 
 madame, if I told you that for full five minutes 
 I had the madness to think to-day 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 con- 
 tinued 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 nightin- 
 gale 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 sup- 
 pose 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 ! '
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 129 
 
 ' I suppose you are right,' said Correze 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. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Eaphael de Correze had said no more than the 
 truth of himself 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
 
 MOTHS. 131 
 
 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. Noblesse 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 remem- 
 brance 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. 
 
 Correze, with all his negligence and gaiety, 
 and spoilt child of the 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 intodarkness like any shooting star 
 on an August night. He never deceived him- 
 self. 
 
 ^ I am only the world's favourite plaything,' 
 
 £2
 
 132 MOTHS, 
 
 he would say to himself, ' If I lost my voice, I 
 should be served like the nightingale 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, like 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 excus- 
 able. Women had thrown themselves into his 
 arms from his earliest youth for sake of his
 
 MOTHS. 133 
 
 beautiful face, before his voice had been heard ; 
 and when his voice had captured Europe there 
 was scarcely any folly, any madness, any 
 delirium, a,ny 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 enervating, 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 breathless 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 pur- 
 blind. 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 before them and are indifferent ; 
 writers are so many that their writings blend 
 in the public mind in a confused phantasma-
 
 184 MOTHS. 
 
 goria where the colours have run into one 
 another and the lines are all waved and in- 
 distinct ; the singer alone still keeps the old 
 magic power, Hhe beaut}^ that was Athens' 
 and the glory that was Eome's/ still holds the 
 divine cadnceus, 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 seems empty 
 and silent like a wood in which the birds are 
 all dead. 
 
 It is a supreme power, and may well intoxi- 
 cate a man. 
 
 Correze had been as little delirious as any 
 who have drunk of 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
 
 MOTHS. 135 
 
 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 nightin- 
 gale, and ' the crowds in the streets hummed his 
 song.' Yet as the night train bore him through 
 the level meadows, and cornfields 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.
 
 13G MOTHS, 
 
 ' 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 wo- 
 men who sought him than to his own; the 
 chief, indeed, but only one amongst many 
 other distractions and triumphs.
 
 MOTHS. 137 
 
 It was not love that made his heart go out 
 to that fah'-haired child, with the thoughtful 
 questioning eyes. It was rather pity, tender- 
 ness, 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 ! 
 
 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
 
 138 MOTHS. 
 
 her perruque and her papelitos, had said all 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 stockings? 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 reigned 
 over his life because he reigned over hers like
 
 MOTHS. 139 
 
 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 was 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.
 
 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 goodnaturedly when she had left a room ; 
 and this abstinence is as strong a mark of sin- 
 cerity nowadays, as dying for another used to 
 be in tlie 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 season by marrying 
 her daughter (a beauty) to a young marquis, 
 who, with the small exceptions of being a
 
 MOTHS. 141 
 
 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 accord- 
 ingly burned for him passionately, and Lady 
 Stoat had won him. 
 
 Lady Stoat was as much revered as a 
 maternal model of excellence 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-
 
 142 MOTHS, 
 
 headed acacias, and with blazing geranium 
 beds underneath its gilded balconies and mar- 
 queterie doors. Ladj Dolly had herself driven 
 over in the Due de Dinant's ])anier 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. Bat 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 Stitch ley 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 smoothe 
 a crease or remove a crumb, though neither be 
 marring their own property, so would Lady 
 Stoat go far out of her way to prevent a
 
 MOTHS. 143 
 
 scandal, reconcile two enemies, or clear a 
 tangled path. It was her way of amusing her- 
 self. She had a genius for management. She 
 was a clever tactician, and her tactics in- 
 terested her, and employed her time agreeably. 
 If anyone in her world wanted a marriage ar- 
 ranged, 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.
 
 144 MOTHS, 
 
 * 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 bye, I 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 spoil- 
 ing all her pets ! I feel I was born to be a 
 grandmama ! ' 
 
 ' I am so glad, how very charming ! ' mur- 
 mured Lady Dolly, vaguely and quite in- 
 different. ' I am so terribly afraid Vere 
 won't please, and I am so afraid of this affair 
 with Correze.' 
 
 'What affair? with whom?' asked Lady 
 Stoat of Stichley, 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.
 
 MOTHS. 145 
 
 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 ! ' 
 
 'AU 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,' replied Lady Dolly, in a sort of 
 despair. ' She is not the style of the day at aU, 
 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 gentle- 
 woman, and they like us best when we don't. 
 I have a conviction that men will be afraid of 
 VOL. I. L
 
 U6 MOTm. 
 
 her. Is there any thing more fatal ? Vere will 
 never look like a helle '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 Ma^rie- 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 con- 
 cerned her or not. 
 
 ' There is the Chambree's son ? ' she said 
 hesitatingly. 
 
 ' I know ! But they will want such a dower, 
 and Yere has nothing— nothing ! ' 
 
 * But if she be a beauty ?' 
 
 ' She will be beautiful ; she won't be a
 
 MOTHS. 147 
 
 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 impassive- 
 ness, '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 tran- 
 quilly. ' 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 underneath Fiver's bloom ; her 
 pretty sparkling eyes glanced uneasily. 
 
 ' Zouroff ! ' she repeated vaguely, ' Zouroff ! ' 
 
 ' I think I should try,' answered Lady Stoat 
 calmly. ' Yes ; I do think I should try. By 
 the way, take her to Felicite ; 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 seaso;n ; don't 
 I know what it is ! And for you ^ so young as 
 l3
 
 148 MOTHS. 
 
 you are, to go to balls with a demoiselle a 
 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. 
 
 ' Has she done naughty things that she has 
 not told me,' thought her confidante. ' No, I 
 do not fancy so. Poor little pussy ! 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 wa;? ^till startled and agitated, and strove 
 to hide thai "^^he was so. ' Vere would never,' 
 
 \
 
 MOTHS. 149 
 
 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, imper- 
 ceptible, 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 gene- 
 ration. 
 
 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 clidlet to dress for a 
 dinner at the Maison Normande.
 
 160 MOTHS. 
 
 The doors of Felicite would not open until 
 the first day of September, and there were still 
 some dozen days of August yet to pass, and on 
 those days Vere 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 
 ^etits chevaux ; she was made to walk up and 
 down the planks, 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 jpeches a quinze sous. She was taken 
 to the hal des hehes, and felfc 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 ! '
 
 MOTHS. 151 
 
 She, even in monastic old Bnlmer, 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, to this untutored child of 
 the Northumbrian moors, looked so grotesque 
 and so vulgar. This Trouville mob of fine ladies 
 and adventuresses, princes and blacklegs, minis- 
 ters and dentists, reigning 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 hu- 
 manity, dismayed 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
 
 152 MOTHS. 
 
 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 ! You have 
 not a grain of adaptability. I read the other 
 day somewhere that Madame Eecamier, 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 everything, 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 prediction that it was in female 
 power to utter. Vere was quite unmoved ; she 
 scarcely heard. 
 
 She was thinking of that voice, clear as the 
 ring of gold, which had said to her :
 
 MOTHS. 153 
 
 ' 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 emula- 
 tion 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 impene- 
 trable 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 and 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 Eoyal. 
 
 Autres temps, autres moeurs — but we too have 
 our martyrs. 
 
 Felicite was a seaside chateau of the Princes 
 Zouroff, which they had bought from an old
 
 154 M0TH8. 
 
 decayed Frencli family, and had transformed 
 into a veritable castle of fairy-land. They came 
 to it for about three months in as many years ; 
 but for beauty and loveliness 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 Princess Nadine Nela- 
 guine was keeping open house there for her 
 brother Sergius Zouroff. 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 Zouroif 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
 
 MOTHS. 166 
 
 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 crael, yet she had in her own way a 
 kind heart ; she was a great musician and a 
 great mathematician ; she had been an ambas- 
 sadress, 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 aj^proved of him. 
 
 * On pent se dehaucher, mats on doit se 
 debauclier avec de resprit,' 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 compre- 
 hend, 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
 
 156 MOTHS 
 
 that do not even divert you, only because every- 
 body 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 ox 
 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 Csesar.' 
 
 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 society 
 of Europe, he knew very w^ell that he could 
 copy Vitellius as he chose without drawing 
 any chastisement on him. In a cold and
 
 MOTHS. 157 
 
 heavy way lie 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. Vere 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,
 
 168 MOTHS, 
 
 an American heiress, Fuscliia 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
 
 MOTHS. 159 
 
 will do you more good than I could if I liad 
 patience to talk to you for ever. You will see 
 what the girl of your time must be if she want 
 to please.' 
 
 Yere's beautiful mouth curled contemptu- 
 ously. 
 
 ' I do not want to please.' 
 
 ' That is an insane remark/ said LadyDoUy 
 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. 
 
 ' That is just the sort of silly thing I hate to 
 hear a girl say, or 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,' Yere suggested
 
 160 MOTHS. 
 
 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 per- 
 fect now; at five- and-t wen ty she will be 
 hideous, but she will dress so well it won't 
 matter. I know for a fact, that she refused 
 3-our 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.' , . . v^-
 
 MOTHS. 161 
 
 ' 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'd 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 between green hedges. The high 
 metal roof and gilded vanes of Felicite were 
 already shining above the low rounded 
 masses of distant woods. It stood on the 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 MOTHS. 
 
 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 he was 
 kind, if a little rough. She liked him." Only 
 why did her mother call him Jack, and quarrel 
 with him so, and yet want him always with her ? 
 
 Vere thought about it dimly, vaguely, per- 
 plexedly, 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 Felicite seemed to Vere to 
 be a whirl of bright hues, pretty faces, and 
 amiable words. The Princess Nadine Nelaguine 
 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
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 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 afternoon light. 
 
 When Vere herself, three hours later, was 
 dressed for dinner, and told to tap at her 
 mother's door, she did not feel nervous, because 
 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 hannted her. 
 
 Lady Dolly said sharply, ' Come in ! ' and 
 Vere entering, beheld 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 
 coeiir 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 Bonffes in her last 
 new piece, as even her own soul could aspire to 
 do. 
 
 ' What are you staring at child ? ' she asked 
 
 m2
 
 164 MOTHS. 
 
 of Vere, who had turned rather pale. ' Don't 
 you think I look well ? What is the matter ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing/ said Vere, who could not answer 
 that it hurt her to see so much of her mother's 
 anatomy unveiled. 
 
 ' You look as if you saw a ghost/ said Lady 
 Dolly impatiently ; ' you have such a horrid 
 way of staring. Come ! ' 
 
 Vere 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. 
 
 Lady Dolly in her way was an artist, and 
 she had known the right thing to do when she
 
 MOTHS. 166 
 
 had had Vere clad in white cachemire, with an 
 old silver girdle of German work, and in the 
 coils of her hair a single silver arrow. 
 
 Vere was perfect in her stately, serious, yet 
 childlike grace ; and the women watching her 
 enter felt a pang of envy. 
 
 Sergius ZourofP, her host, advancing, mur- 
 mured a ^ divinement belle ! ' and Lady Stoat, 
 watching from a distant sofa, thought to herself 
 * What a lovely creature ! really it is trying for 
 poor little pussy.' 
 
 Vere went in to her first great dinner. She 
 said little or nothing. She listened and won- 
 dered. Where she sat she could not see her 
 mother nor anyone 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 Correze 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.
 
 J.66 MOTHS. 
 
 But even Lady Stoat did not make mucb. way 
 with lier ; 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, on an ottoman, her hands behind her head, 
 a rosebud in her mouth, and a male group 
 around her. 
 
 ' I shall not like her; I do not wish to know 
 her,' said Vere slowly.
 
 MOTHS, 167 
 
 ' My dear, do not say so/ said Lady Stoat. 
 'It will sound like jealousy, yon 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, 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 Vere 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 kno^ving her — nonsense — you must
 
 168 MOTHS. 
 
 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 like- 
 nesses of the young ladies that try the confec- 
 tions 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 gentle- 
 women 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 anyone I did not re- 
 spect for an enemy than for a friend,' said Vere 
 with a child's obstinacy. Lady Stoat smiled. 
 
 ' Phrases my love ! — phrases ! you have so 
 much to learn, my child, as yet.'
 
 MOTHS. 169 
 
 ' 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 daresay 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 be- 
 ribboned ambassador. 
 
 Vere was left alone, to look and muse. 
 
 Men glanced at her and said what a lovely 
 child she 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
 
 370 MOTHS. 
 
 — Fuscliia 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. 
 
 '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 
 Euschia Leach ? ' 
 
 Yere 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 know what it is my- 
 self; 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.
 
 MOTHS. 171 
 
 ' 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 1 joks 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 
 Yere 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
 
 172 MOTHS. 
 
 rest. One does heaps of things one hates only 
 because others do them.' 
 
 ' That is very contemptible/ said Vere, with 
 the disdain that became her very 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, Yere 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 and 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
 
 MOTHS. 173 
 
 " he " that talked like a poet while I talk 
 like a sweep ? ' 
 
 ' I did not say you talked like a sweep — 
 and I meant the Marquis de Correze.' 
 
 ' Oh ! your singer ? Don't call him a Mar- 
 quis. He is the prince of tenors, that's all.' 
 
 'He is a Marquis,' said Vere, with a cer- 
 tain 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, Tin homme d'' autrefois ? ' 
 
 ^ Never heard of it. Did the tenor tell you 
 all that rubbish ? ' 
 
 ' Where is mamma, Lord Jura ? ' said Vere. 
 ' 1 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. ' Correze shall 
 be a prince of the blood, if you wish. Your 
 mother is over there; but I doubt if she'll 
 thank you to go to her ; she's in the thick of 
 it with them ; look.'
 
 174 MOTHS. 
 
 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. 
 
 Vere 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 innocently, 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 
 Vere. ^ It is nothing new for me.' 
 
 ' Let me show you my flowers first,' at last 
 said Prince Zouroff. ' You know we Eussians^ 
 born amidst snow and ice, have a passion for 
 tropical houses ; will you not come ? ' 
 
 He held out his arm as he spoke. Would
 
 MOTHS. 175 
 
 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 eye-glass up, and 
 smiled. 
 
 Prince Zouroff had a horror of unmarried 
 women, and never had been 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 gen- 
 tleman when he chose -, and he was one of the 
 richest men in Europe, and his family, of 
 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
 
 176 MOTHS. 
 
 team of black Orlofs, lie had been the idola- 
 try, the aspiration, and the despair of all the 
 mothers of maidens. 
 
 Yere'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-
 
 MOTHS, 177 
 
 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. 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 MOTHS. 
 
 'Decidedly she lias been not at all with 
 naughty Dolly ! ' 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 angr}^, she could not very well 
 have told why. 
 
 ' Your flowers are magnificent, and I thank 
 you, monsieur ; but I am tired, and T 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. 
 
 .' I would not detain you unwillingly, made- 
 moiselle, 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 stair- 
 case ; and Yere, not knowing whether she were 
 not breaking all the rules of politeness and
 
 MOTHS. 179 
 
 etiquette, bent her head to him and darted like 
 a swallow np 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 fright- 
 ened. 'She is rude ! ' she added regretfully. 
 ^ It is the way she has been brought up. You 
 must forgive her, she is so young,' 
 
 ' Forgive her ! 31ais de hon coeur ! Any- 
 thing 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 ?
 
 180 MOTHS. 
 
 Sergius Zouro£P 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 Zouroif. 
 
 They began to play, most of them, at a 
 little roulette table. Musicians were inter- 
 preting, 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.
 
 MOTHS. rsi 
 
 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 Vere'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
 
 1?2 MOTHS. 
 
 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 ! ' 
 
 It is a martyrdom, but they bear it heroic- 
 ally, knowing that without it they would be 
 nowhere ; would be yellow, pallid, wrinkled, 
 even perhaps would be flirtationless, unenvied, 
 unregarded, worse than dead ! 
 
 If Lady Dolly had said any prayers she 
 would have said, ' Thank God for Piver ! '
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 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 pimjmnt 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
 
 184 MOTHS. 
 
 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 her ; the women disliked her 
 as much as they adored, or professed to adore, 
 Fuschia Leach. 
 
 To Vere, who at Bulmer had been accus- 
 tomed to see life held a serious, and even 
 solemn thing — who had been accustomed to the 
 gravity of age and the melancholy of a sea- 
 faring poor, and the northern tillers of a 
 thankless soil — nothing seemed so wonderful 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 
 forgotten here? She was always wondering, 
 and there was no one to ask. 
 
 'You are horribly in earnest, Vere,' said 
 her mother pettishly. ' You should go and live 
 with Mr. Gladstone.'
 
 MOTHS, 185 
 
 But to Vere its 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 
 understand that, when these pretty women had 
 sold china and flowers at a fancy fair for a 
 hospital, or subscribed to the Society for Pre- 
 vention of Cruelty, they had really done all that 
 they thought was required of them, and could 
 dismiss all human and animal pain from their 
 mind, and bring their riding-horses home 
 saddle- galled and spur- torn without any com- 
 punction. 
 
 To the complete innocence and honesty of 
 the girl's nature the discovery of what 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
 
 186 MOTHS. 
 
 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 sugges- 
 tions 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 uncon- 
 sciously, as they learn French and German from 
 their maids. When the}^ 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 not ; 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 thoroughness — baby 
 La Bruyeres and girl-Rochefoucaulds in frills 
 and sashes.
 
 MOTHS. 187 
 
 To Yere Herbert, on the contrary, reared as 
 slie had been upon grave studies and in country 
 loneliness, the shocks her faiths and 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 Gari- 
 baldi, the many noble maternal figures of 
 history and romance, were for ever in her 
 thoughts ; the 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
 
 188 MOTHS. 
 
 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 I ' 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 con- 
 demn your mother only to have your inclina- 
 tions, would you? Dolly was always full of 
 fun. I think you have not fun enough in you, 
 perhaps.' 
 
 ' But my father is dead.'
 
 MOTHS. 189 
 
 ^ My clear, Queen Anne is dead ! Henri 
 Quatre est sur le Font-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 your 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 mama 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 everyone that it was 
 only natural — only natural that ' 
 
 ' She should not want me,' said Yere, 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, whilst thinking, 'Quel enfant 
 terrible I ' 
 
 The brilliant Fuschia was inclined to be 
 very amiable and cordial to the young daughter
 
 100 MOTHS. 
 
 of Lady Dorothy Vanderdecken, but Vere re- 
 pelled lier overtures with a cliilling 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
 
 MOTHS. 191 
 
 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 
 cleverness, 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
 
 192 MOTHS. 
 
 of the ten thousand American girls who over- 
 run Europe. 
 
 ' I like you,' she said to Vere unasked one 
 day, when she found her alone on the lawn. 
 
 ' You are very good,' said Vere, 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 Euro- 
 peans go after men as the squir'ls jump after 
 cobs. You are the only one I have seen that 
 don't.' 
 
 ' You are very amiable to praise me,' said 
 Vere coldly. 
 
 The lovely Euschia continued her reflections 
 aloud. 
 
 'We're just as bad when the Englishmen 
 go over to us; that's 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 katy-did. 
 Now on our side, you know, the old folks never 
 get at play like that ; they've given over.'
 
 MOTHS. 1{);J 
 
 'My mother is young,' said Vere, 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 ? ' 
 
 Vere did not reply, and Miss Fuschia Leach, 
 undaunted, continued her meditations aloud. 
 
 'You haven't had many affairs, I think? 
 You're not really out are you ? ' 
 
 ' No— affairs ? ' 
 
 ' Jleart 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 ? ' 
 
 * Me ? 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 I vowed constancy and 
 exchanged rings and hair and all that, and we 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 MOTHS. 
 
 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 big- 
 gest 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 look 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
 
 MOTHS. 195 
 
 coats and battered old hats, such as your 
 coushi 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 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 Vere 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 
 
 02
 
 lOG MOTIIS. 
 
 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 
 one 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 coronations every day. They tell me 
 your cousin might be rolling if he liked. Is it 
 true he'd have five hundred pounds sterling a 
 day if he bored for coal ? One could live on 
 that.' 
 
 ' He would never permit the forest to be 
 touched to save his life ! ' said Yere, indig- 
 nantly 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 Otterbourne; under 
 one of the oaks. King James saw Johnie Arm- 
 strong.' 
 
 Fuschia Leach showed all her pretty teeth. 
 ' Very touchin', but the coal was under them
 
 MOTHS. 197 
 
 before that, I guess ! That's much more to the 
 point. I come from a business-country. If 
 he'll hear reason about that coal, I'm not sure 
 I won't think twice about your cousin.' 
 
 Yere, without ceremony, turned awa.y. 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's it worse than all your big 
 nobility going down at our feet for our 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. Thafs 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 Csesar's times, men that had uncles in 
 the Ark with Noah, they're at a Yankee pile 
 likes flies around molasses. AYal, now,' said
 
 198 MOTHS. 
 
 the pretty American, with her eyes lighting 
 fiercely and with sparks of scorn flashing out 
 from them, ' Wal, now, you're all of you that 
 proud that 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 Marchioness 
 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
 
 MOTHS. 199 
 
 Buondelmare, if not Lotty Miller, who Avas 
 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 con- 
 cern,' said the other with some demur. ' But 
 if any child need be ashamed it is not this 
 child. There's a woman in Eome, 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 Eome 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
 
 200 MOTHS. 
 
 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 sus- 
 piciously. 
 
 ' I guess I don't understand you,' she said 
 a little sulkily. 'I guess you're very deep, 
 aren't you ? ' 
 
 ' Pardon me,' said Yere, weary of the con- 
 versation ; ' 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 plea- 
 sure in tearing over bleak fields and jumping
 
 MOTHS. 201 
 
 scratching hedges. A calorifere at eighty de- 
 grees 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. Every thing out of doors made her 
 chilly. 
 
 She watched Vere 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 un- 
 rivalled, and a delightful mingling of utter 
 ignorance and intense shrewdness, 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 imagina-
 
 202 MOTHS. 
 
 tive columns of ' own correspondents.' But 
 Fuschia Leach was no fool, as slie said often 
 herself, and she felt, as her eyes followed Yere, 
 that this calm cold child with her great con- 
 temptuous eyes and her tranquil voice, had 
 something she had not ; something that not all 
 the art of Mr. Worth could send with his con- 
 fections 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 Yere'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 fore- 
 head, the last slang on her lips, and the last 
 news on her ear, her own generation would
 
 MOTHS. 203 
 
 find lier 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, unat- 
 tainable ' 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 i)arty go out with a 
 sigh of envy — the slender figure of Yere fore- 
 most 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 Yillers. 
 
 ' 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. 
 
 That day Prince Zouroff rode by Yere's 
 side, and paid her many compliments on her
 
 204 MOTHS. 
 
 riding and other things ; but she scarcely 
 heard them. She knew she could ride any- 
 thing, as she told him; and she thought 
 everyone 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 jargon, but she had understood 
 the menace to the grand, old, sombre border 
 forests about Castle Herbert, which she loved 
 with a love only second to that she felt for the 
 moors and woods of Buhner. 
 
 ' 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 rode with 
 her were saying to each other, ' Is it possible "? 
 Can he be serious ? '
 
 Moths. 205 
 
 Vere 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 
 bewildered 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 un- 
 ceasingly criticised. Speaking little herself, she 
 listened, and observed, and began to under- 
 stand 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.
 
 206 MOTHS. 
 
 ' Pray be anything else rather than 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 
 YiQ 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 Masillon.' 
 
 ^ Who cares for Marmontel and Masillon ? ' 
 said Lady Dolly in disgust. 
 
 She was flattered by the success of Vere 
 as a beauty, and irritated by her failure as a 
 companionable creature. She was trium- 
 phant to see the impression made by the 
 girl's blending of sculptural calm and child- 
 like 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
 
 MOTHS. 207 
 
 DoUj, obliged to apologise contin-ually for some 
 misplaced sincerity or obtuse negligence 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 ; yon 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 3^ou know, you chit P 
 
 Yere was always silent under these instruc- 
 tions ; they were but little understood by her. 
 VYhen 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-examination. In history she de- 
 tested the Puritans ; all her sympathies were 
 with the other side. Yet she began now to
 
 208 MOTHS. 
 
 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, bewil- 
 dered 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 gentlewoman 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 exception, 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
 
 MOTHS. 209 
 
 purest blood and highest station, people very 
 exclusive, very prominent and -vsery illustrious), 
 Vere found things that seemed passing strange 
 to her. When she heard of professional beau- 
 ties, 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 she saw that men were the 
 wooed, not the wooers, and that the art of 
 flirtation was reduced to a tournament of ef- 
 frontery ; when she saw a great 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 dther women's husbands, and saw every- 
 one looking on the pastime as a matter of course 
 quite goodnaturedly; when she saw one of these 
 ladies take a flea from her person and cry, Qui 
 
 VOL. I, p
 
 310 MOTHS. 
 
 m^aime Vavale, 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, 
 theyonng 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 dis- 
 gust 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 dis- 
 enchantment, 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 
 Vere, 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 Vere grew sick, and she began slowly
 
 MOTHS. 2il 
 
 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 distractedly. ' 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 fan about 
 the flea she rose and walked away, turned 
 her back positively, as if she were a scan- 
 dalised dowager. Now, you know, that 
 doesn't do nowadays. The age of saints is 
 gone by ' 
 
 ' If there ever were one,' said Lady Dolly, 
 p2
 
 212 MOTHS. 
 
 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 countenance; she 
 will resist actively as well as endure passively.' 
 
 ' 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 personage. 
 
 ' Why can't you get on with people ? ' Lady 
 Dolly said to Yere irritably, that day. 
 
 'I do not think they like me,' said Vere 
 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
 
 MOTHS, '2\Z 
 
 like you. It is perfectly simple. You get 
 what you give my dear in this world. But the 
 sad truth is, Vere, 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 ex- 
 quisite gardens with the gleam of the sea 
 between the festoons of their roses that no one 
 hardly ever noticed except herself. In a de- 
 serted 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.
 
 214 MOTHS. 
 
 if her mother took her there. He would tell 
 lier 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 Vera, are you unhappy ? and 
 in Felicite ! ' said a voice that was very unlike 
 that unforgotten music — the voice of Sergius 
 ZourofP. 
 
 Vere looked up startled, with her tears still 
 wet, like dew. 
 
 Zouroif 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.' 
 
 'Your are very good, monsieur,' said Vere 
 hesitatingly. 'It is nothing — very little, at 
 least ; my mother is vexed with me.'
 
 MOTHS. 215 
 
 ' 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. 
 
 ' ISTo one likes me,' said Yere wearily, ' and 
 my mother thinks it is my fault. !N"o 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 Zouroff paced by her side. 
 
 ' Loris pleases you ? Will you give him the 
 happiness of being called yours ? ' 
 
 Yere for once raised a bright and grateful 
 face to him, a flush of pleasure drying her 
 tears. 
 
 ' Mine ? Loris ? Oh that would be delight- 
 ful ! — if mamma will let me.'
 
 216 MOTHS, 
 
 'Your mother will let you,' said ZourofF, 
 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. 
 
 Vere laughed for a moment — a child's sud- 
 den laugh at a droll idea; then her brows 
 contracted a little. 
 
 ' Dogs do not flatter me,' she said curtly. 
 
 ' Nor do I — foi d^honneur ! 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 Yere coldly. ' She said that I do not like 
 people, and I do not.' 
 
 'Dame ! you have very excellent taste then/ 
 said Zouroff with a laugh. ' I will not quarrel 
 with your coldness. Mademoiselle Yera, if you 
 will only make an exception for me ? '
 
 MOTHS. 217 
 
 Vere was silent. 
 
 Zouroff's 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 serions 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.' 
 
 '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 ? ' 
 
 Vere 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 Eussian means Faith. You 
 are well named. Mademoiselle Vera,' he said
 
 218 MOTHS. 
 
 carelessly, as he continued to walk by lier side. 
 'But I shall hope to make you think better 
 things of me yet, and I can never kick Loris 
 again, as he is now yours, without your per- 
 mission.' 
 
 'You will never have that,* said Vere, 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 compli- 
 ance ; 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.
 
 MOTHS. 219 
 
 Lady Dolly's heart gave a sudden leap, then 
 stopped its beats m suspense. 
 
 ' Positively — I do — think ' murmured 
 
 the lady of the flea ; and then fell back in her 
 chair in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. 
 
 Vere loosened her hand from her host's 
 arm as they ascended the terrace steps, and 
 came straight to her mother. 
 
 ' Monsieur ZouroflP 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 ZourofiP, with a grim smile. 
 
 The ladies laughed. 
 
 Vere did not hear or heed. She was caress- 
 ing her new treasure.
 
 220 MOTHS. 
 
 ' 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 hardly seems possible — when one 
 thinks what he has had thrown at his head and 
 never looked at ! And Vere ! such a rude 
 creature, and such a simpleton ! ' 
 
 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
 
 MOTHS. 221 
 
 she saw the look in his eyes which Yere did 
 not see. 
 
 * It will be horrible ! horrible ! ' she said to 
 herself. ' Why did Adiiie 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 someone else's bad counsels. 
 
 Lady Dolly was frightened when she thought 
 that it was possible that this scorner of un- 
 married women would be won by her own child. 
 But she was yet more terrified when the pro- 
 bable hopelessness of any such project flashed 
 on her. 
 
 The gift of the dog might mean everything, 
 and might mean nothing. 
 
 ' Wliat 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
 
 222 MOTHS. 
 
 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 answered cautiously,— 
 
 ' I think he might be made to mean it.' 
 
 Lady 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 Troubadour's 
 motto for his mistress's falcon : 
 
 ' Quiconque me trouvera, quHl me mene a ma 
 maitresse : pour recompense il la verra.' 
 
 Yere looked doubtfully at the collar; she 
 preferred Loris without it. 
 
 ' He does mean it,' said Lady Dolly to her- 
 self, and her pulses fluttered strangely. 
 
 ' I'd have given you a dog if I'd known you 
 wished for one,' said John Jura moodily that 
 evening to Vere. She smiled and thanked 
 him. 
 
 ^ I had so many dogs about me at Bulmer 
 I feel lost without one, and Loris is very 
 beautiful '
 
 MOTHS. 223 
 
 Jura looked at her with close scrutiny. 
 
 ' How do you like the giver of Loris ? ' 
 
 Vere 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 
 manlike a thief! You don't seem to under- 
 stand modern ethics,' said the heroine of the 
 flea epic, as she passed near with a little laugh, 
 oil her way to play cliemin cle 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-peojDle ? ' said Vere 
 in some astonishment. ' They are all gentle- 
 men and gentlewomen born.' 
 
 * Oh, horn ! ' 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
 
 224 MOTHS. 
 
 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. 
 
 Vere 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 ! ' 
 
 Vere 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.
 
 MOTHS, 225 
 
 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. 
 
 ' You are very kind to think of me,' she 
 said with a certain emotion. 
 
 ' Who would not think of you ? ' muttered 
 Jura, with a darkness on his frank, fair, bold 
 face. ' Don't be so astonished that I do,' he 
 said, with a little laugh, whose irony she did 
 not understand. 'You know I am such a 
 friend of your mother's ' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Yere gravely* 
 
 She was perplexed. He 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 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 MOTHS. 
 
 you now. I bought one at Christie's last win- 
 ter, that belonged to Maria Teresa ; 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 ! ' 
 
 She laughed a little. 
 
 'I like you better than Monsieur ZouroiF.' 
 
 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. ' Clementine 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
 
 MOTHS. 227 
 
 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 anyone ; and her mother seemed to 
 say that another friend, who was a French 
 Duchess, descended from a Valois, was guilty 
 of cheating at cards ! 
 
 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 happi- 
 ness.' 
 
 He laughed aloud. 
 
 ' What damned hypocrites all you women 
 are ! ' 
 
 92
 
 228 MOTHS. 
 
 ' My dear Jura, jpray ! you are not in a 
 guard-room or a club-room ! ' said Lady Dolly 
 very seriously shocked indeed. 
 
 Lord Jura got her 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 him- 
 self into the smoking-room, which at that hour 
 was quite deserted. He threw himself down 
 on one of the couches, and thought — moodily, 
 impatiently, bitterly. 
 
 ' What cursed fools we are ! ' he mused. 
 What a fool he had been ever to fancy that he 
 loved the bloom of Fiver'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 Hurling- 
 ham had been in its earliest natal days of glory. 
 There had been a dinner-party for a Sunday
 
 MOTHS. 229 
 
 evening ; he remembered carrying her tea, and 
 picking her out the big strawberries 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 jDlace ; 
 she was always at home at four. He remem- 
 bered 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 fontaine 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 ! '
 
 230 MOTHS. 
 
 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 me ? It doesn't 
 suit me.' 
 
 ' I put it on Camelot because it sounds more 
 decent; and I mean to go,' said Lord Jura, 
 plunging his hands in his pockets. '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.
 
 MOTHfS. 231 
 
 ' What language ! How is he any more 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 ? Grood gracious ! What is Yera 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, in- 
 deed ! — 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 kiUed 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-fcrap. My
 
 232 MOTHS, 
 
 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 al- 
 lowed 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 tomorrow,' he added carelessly; 'and you 
 inay as well give me a book or a note or some- 
 thing for the women at Camelot ; it will stay 
 heir tongues here.' 
 
 ' I have a tapestry pattern to send to your 
 sisters,' said Lady Dolly, submissive but infuri-
 
 MOTHS, 233 
 
 ated. ' What do jou know about Sergius Zou- 
 roff, Jack ? I wish you would tell me.' 
 
 ^ I think JOU 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 aU the same that if you give your 
 daughter when she's scarce sixteen to that brute, 
 you might just as well strip her naked and set 
 her up to auction like the girl in La Coupe ou 
 La Femme ! ' 
 
 *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
 
 234 MOTHS. 
 
 twiliglit, he sat on deck and smoked, and grew 
 heavy-liearted. He was not a book-learned 
 man, and seldom read anything beyond the 
 sporting papers, or a French romance ; but 
 some old verse, abont the Fates making out of 
 our pleasant vices whips to scourge ns 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 Vere Herbert's with a franlv 
 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 maisonette 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
 
 MOTHS. 235 
 
 wandered away to that maisonette in liis 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 lij). 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
 
 230 MOTHS, 
 
 how odd ! Good heavens ! that he should care 
 — that he should think — of what is fit or 
 unfit ! ' 
 
 And it made her laugh convulsively, in a 
 sort of spasm of mirth, for which the gestures 
 and jokes of the scene gave excuse. 
 
 Yet she had never felt so 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 up her fan and played with it. 
 
 ' Miladi, we have always been friends, good 
 friends, have we not ? ' he said with the smile 
 that she hated. ' You know me well, and can 
 judge me without flattery. What will you say 
 if I tell you that I seek the 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 contrac- 
 tion at the corners of her pretty rosebud-like 
 mouth. 
 
 ' Any mother could have but one answer to
 
 MOTHS. 237 
 
 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 hur- 
 riedly ; ' she is so young.' 
 
 'As you will, madame ! Place myself and 
 all I have at her feet.' 
 
 ' What can you have seen in her ! Good 
 heavens ! ' she cried in 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.
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 ' I shall never persuade her ! ' she thought ; 
 gazing with dry, hot eyes at the light swinging 
 before her mirror. The eyes of Vere seemed 
 to look at her in their innocent, scornful 
 serenity, and the eyes of Vere's father too. 
 
 ' Do the dead ever come back ? ' she 
 thought ; ' some people say they do.' 
 
 And Lady Dolly, between her soft sheets, 
 shivered, and felt frightened and old. 
 
 She was on the edge of a crime, and she 
 had a conscience, though it was a very small 
 and feeble one, and seldom spoke.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Vere had been up with the sunrise, and out 
 with Loris. She had had 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 fra- 
 grant with the smell of mown grass and pressed 
 thyme ; she stole back on tiptoe through the 
 long 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 was the 
 summer morning itself, with the dew upon her
 
 240 MOTHS. 
 
 hair and the smell of the blossoms entering 
 with her, into the warm oppressive air that 
 was laden with the smells of anodynes and per- 
 fumes. 
 
 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 fore- 
 head with a kiss. 
 
 * My darling, my sweet child,' she mur- 
 mured, ' 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 ! ' 
 
 * Mother ! ' Vere stepped backward, then 
 stood still again ; a speechless amaze, an utter
 
 MOTHS, 241 
 
 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 ! ' said Lady Dolly, lapsing into 
 the tone most natural to her. ' " Mother ! 
 mother ! " as if I were beating you with a 
 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 anything 
 better. You are exceedingly young, indeed, 
 according to English notions, but they never 
 VOL. I. E
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 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 move- 
 ment, and would have kissed her again, but 
 Yere moved away, her eyes were darkened 
 with anger, and her lips were tremulous. 
 
 ' Prince ZourofP is a coward,' said the girl, 
 very low, but very bitterly. ^ He knows that 
 T loathe him, and that I think him a bad man. 
 How dare he — how dare he — insult me so ! ' 
 
 ' Insult you ! ' echoed Lady Dolly, with 
 almost a scream. 'Are you mad? Insult 
 you ! A man that all Europe has been wild to 
 marry these fifteen years past ! Insult you ! 
 A man who offers you an alliance that will 
 send you out of a room before everybody except 
 actually princesses of the blood ? Insult you !
 
 MOTHS. 243 
 
 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 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 everyone 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 
 understood than she could have understood the 
 paths travelled by the invisible stars. 
 
 'Eeally you are too ridiculous,' she said 
 impatiently. ' Even you, I should think, must 
 know what love means. I believe even at 
 Bulmer you read "Waverley." You have 
 charmed 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, yon must be 
 
 r2
 
 244 MOTHf^. 
 
 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 
 anj'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 des- 
 paired of you. You are very lovely, but you 
 are old-fashioned, pedantic, unpleasant. You
 
 MOTHS. 245 
 
 have no chic. You have no malleability. You 
 are handsome, and that is all. It is a wonder- 
 ful thing that you should have made such a 
 coup as this before you are even out. You are 
 quite penniless ; quite, did you understand 
 that? You have no claim on Mr. Yander- 
 decken, and I am not at all sure that he will 
 not make a great piece of work when I leave 
 him to pay for jo\xv 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 corheille, all the rest must come from me, 
 and must be 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 ZourofP, but tell him from me 
 that I will not marry him. I will not. That 
 is enough.' 
 
 Then, before her mother could speak again,
 
 240 MOTES. 
 
 she gathered up the dew-wet flowers m 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 
 breakfast — being in the country they thought
 
 MOTHS. 247 
 
 it well to rise early. Serge Zouroff, as he met 
 her, smiled. 
 
 * Eh lien ? ' 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 helle, 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 Ukes you nor dislikes you, 
 because her mind is in its chrysalis state — isn't 
 it a chrysalis, the thing that is rolled up in a
 
 248 MOTHS. 
 
 shell asleep? — and of love and marriage my 
 Vera is as unconscious as those china children 
 yonder holding up the breakfast bouquets. She 
 is cold, you know; that you see for your- 
 self ' 
 
 ' Tin heau defaut ! ' 
 
 ' Un heau 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 ' 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 pre- 
 cocious it is always so — hush — don't let them 
 overhear us. We don't want it talked about at 
 present, do we ? ' 
 
 ' As you like,' said ZourofP 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
 
 MOTHS. 249 
 
 was disagreeable to him, and he was worried at 
 that moment by the pretensions of one of the 
 actresses at the maisonette 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 
 * something ' about Vere 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. 'A child, not even out, and one of 
 those Mull Herberts without a penny.' 
 
 ' Won't you come down ? ' said Lady Dolly 
 sharply to Yere a little later. 
 
 ' I will come down if I may say the truth to 
 Prince Zouroff.'
 
 250 MOTHS. 
 
 ' Until you accept him you will say nothing 
 to him. It is impossible to keep you here 
 houdant like this. It becomes ridiculous. What 
 will all those women say ! . . . I will drive you 
 over to Laure's. We will stay there a few 
 days, and you will hear reason.' 
 
 ' I will not marry Prince Zouroff,' said Yere. 
 
 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 stubbornness. 
 
 ' We will see,' said her mother, drily. ' Get 
 ready to go with me in an hour.' 
 
 Vere, left to herself, undid the collar of 
 Loris, made it in a packet, and wrote a little 
 note, which said : — 
 
 ' I thank you very much. Monsieur, for the 
 honour that I hear 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 I have not that feeling for you which 
 could make me care for or respect you. Please
 
 MOTHS. 261 
 
 to take back this beautiful collar, which is too 
 
 heavy for Loris. Loris I will always keep, and 
 
 I am very fond of 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 heartless, 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 under- 
 stand 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. ^ 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 ! the dog's collar to go to Paris to be
 
 252 MOTHS, 
 
 enlarged ? very well ; leave it there ; it is of no 
 consequence jnst 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 Buhner 
 the servants were old-fashioned, like the place, 
 and the Waverley novels. They told the truth, 
 as they wore boots 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 Vere would 
 have been left free. As it was, the packet re- 
 posed 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 liad read her message and re-
 
 MOTHS. 253 
 
 sented it. In point of fact she did not see him 
 because he was at the maisonette in the park, 
 where the feminine 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? ' 
 they cried in revolt. He granted that they were 
 no better; nevertheless, the prejudices of society 
 were so constituted that chateau and maisonette 
 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 Vere, aghast. 
 
 ' Certainly,' said her mother sharply, strik- 
 ing her ponies ; and the child's heart sank. 
 
 'But he will have had my letter,' she 
 thought, ' and then he will let me alone.'
 
 254 MOTHS. 
 
 Le Caprice was a charming house, with a 
 charming chatelaine^ and charming people were 
 gathered in it for the sea and the shooting ; 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 stupid 
 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-tempered like you,' said the hostess 
 to Lady Dolly, who sighed 
 
 ^ Ah no ! ' 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.
 
 MOTHS. 265 
 
 who must have been very disagreeable in his 
 generation.' 
 
 And that night and every night she said the 
 same thing to Vere : ' Yon must marry Serge 
 Zouroff;' and Vere 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 Vere 
 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 
 Romeo, and screams for so many guineas a 
 night. We won't discuss that.' 
 
 Vere's face burned, but she was mute. It 
 seemed to her that her mother had grown 
 coarse as well as cruel. There was a hardness 
 in her mother that she had never felt before. 
 That her letter should have been read by Serge
 
 256 MOTHS. 
 
 Zouroff, yet make no impression on 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. 
 
 Vere was not asked for, and was thankful. 
 Her eyes wistfully questioned her mother's 
 when they met, but Lady Dolly's were nnre- 
 vealing 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; Vere was silent, grave, and cold, 
 
 ' You are much younger than your daugh- 
 ter, Madame Dolly,' said an old admirer ; and 
 Lady Dolly rufided 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 
 Vera is so hard to please, and I — everything 
 amuses me, and everyone to me seems charming.' 
 
 But this sunny, smiling little visage changed
 
 MOTHS. 267 
 
 when, every evening 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 same 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 talking of Correze. 
 
 They said that he had been singing in the 
 *ridelio,' and surpassing 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 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 MOTHS. 
 
 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 acca- 
 jpareur des femmes 1 
 
 Vere 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 
 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 Abbaye aux Bois also, 
 and, in the last hours of their two days at 
 the Abbaye, Lady Dolly said to her daughter :
 
 MOTHS. 269 
 
 ' To-morrow is the Princes' ball at Felicite, 
 I suppose you remember ? ' 
 
 Vere gave a sign of assent. 
 
 ' That is the loveliest frock La Ferriere 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.' 
 
 Vere was silent. 
 
 ' I must speak to you seriously and for the 
 last time here,' said her mother. 'We go back 
 to Felicite, 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 
 houtade; 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 
 
 S 2
 
 3G0 MOTHS. 
 
 all, Vere, 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 ZourofP.' 
 
 '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 Eoyal 
 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.' 
 
 Vere started to her feet. 
 
 ' And I will stamp them to pieces if he give 
 them to me; and if you tell the Prince of
 
 MOTHS, 261 
 
 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 me 
 find you more reasonable.' 
 
 With that Lady Dolly went out of the 
 room, and out of the house, 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 Felicite, when she 
 had been wearied by her dear Dolly's lamenta-
 
 2C2 MOTHS. 
 
 tions, 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 houtades,' 
 
 ' If it were only houtades ! But you do 
 not know Yere.' 
 
 ' 1 cannot think, dear, that your child can 
 be so very extraordinarily 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 Buhner Chase.' 
 
 Lady Stoat then went upstairs and knocked 
 at the door of Yere's chamber, and entered 
 with the soft, silent charm of movement which
 
 MOTHS. 263 
 
 was one of the especial graces of that grace- 
 ful gentlewoman. She kissed the girl ten- 
 derly, 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 discomfited, but she resumed 
 blandly, * Your mamma has brought me 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.
 
 264 MOTHS. 
 
 Lady Stoat was, for the moment, a little 
 staggered. 
 
 ' What a very unpleasant child,' she thought ; 
 * and who would think she knew anything 
 about poor Birk ! ' 
 
 * Very happy,' she continued aloud, ' and I 
 am charmed to think, my dear, that you have 
 the chance of being equally so. Your mamma 
 tells me, love, that you are a little — a little— 
 bewildered at so brilliant a proposal of marriage 
 as Prince Zouroff's. That is a very natural 
 feeling ; of course you had never thought 
 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 smiling- 
 ly. ' 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
 
 MOTES. 266 
 
 not tell him anything of the kind. She is 
 charmed, my dear girl, charmed ! What better 
 futm'e could she hope for, for you? The 
 Zouroffs are one of 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 her 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 
 ZourofP.' 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 * Eeflected 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
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 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 argument, 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 a 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 feel 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
 
 MOTHS. 267 
 
 more terrible than that. You will take a 
 younger son of a baronet, or a secretary of 
 legation that is 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 Vere ! till you wear 
 diamonds you do not know what life is ! — you 
 can go where you like, as you like, your own mis- 
 tress ; you are i^osee ; you have made yourself a 
 power while your contemporaries are still debii- 
 tantes 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
 
 966 MOTHS. 
 
 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 pussie ! ' 
 
 '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. 
 Princesse Zouroff would always be in the 
 Quadrille d'Honneur.' 
 
 ' 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 lona cross in 
 jewels that hung at her throat, 
 
 * Darling, those are serious and solemn 
 words, A great marriage may be made sub- 
 servient, like any other action of our lives, to 
 God's service.'
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 ' 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 
 of argument. 
 
 * You must learn to understand, my sweet 
 Vere, 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 every- 
 thing ; 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 
 marriage for you beyond all others. Oppo- 
 sition on your part is foolishness, my child, 
 foolishness, blindness, and rebellion.'
 
 270 MOTHS, 
 
 The face of Vere as she listened lost its 
 childish softness, and grew very cold. 
 
 ' I understand ; my mother does not want 
 me, Mr. Vanderdecken does not want me ; 
 this Eussian prince is the first who asks for 
 me, — so I am to be sold because he is rich. I 
 will not be sold ! ' 
 
 ' What exaggerated language, my love. 
 Pray do not exaggerate ; no one uses inflated 
 language now ; even on the stage they don't, 
 it has gone out. Who speaks of joMr being 
 sold, as if you were a slave ? Quelle idee ! 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.' 
 
 ' 1 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,' sh&
 
 MOTHS. 271 
 
 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 I ' she said under her breath. 
 
 Lady Stoat for a moment was startled. 
 
 'Where could she get her melodrama 
 from ? ' she wondered. ' Dolly was never melo- 
 dramatic ; 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 Vere, of using
 
 272 MOfHS. 
 
 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.' 
 
 Vere 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. 
 
 ' 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 ! ' 
 
 Vere, 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!
 
 MOTHS. 273 
 
 what a charming Iphigenia she would look in a 
 theatre ; but there is no use for all that in real 
 Jife. How to convince her ? ' 
 
 Even Lady Stoat was perplexed. 
 
 She began to talk vaguely and gorgeously 
 of the great place of the ZourofP 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. 
 
 Vere waited, till the long discursive de- 
 scriptions ended of themselves, exhausted by 
 their own oratory. Then she said very sim ply 
 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 ! — I! ' 
 
 / Then how can you bid me take His name 
 in vain, and marry Prince Zouroff P ' 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 MOTHS. 
 
 ' 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 ex- 
 aggerated style ; that it was not in good taste, 
 and in no degree to be interpreted literally ; 
 but such an avowal was impossible to a woman 
 who revered the ritual of her Church, and was 
 bound to accept it unquestioned. So she was 
 silent and vanquished — so far. 
 
 ' May I go now ? ' said Vere. 
 
 ' Certainly, love, if you wish, but you must 
 let me talk to you again. I am sure you will 
 change and please your mother — your lovely 
 little mother! — whom you ought to live for, you 
 naughty child, so sweet and so dear as she is.' 
 
 ' She has never lived for me,' thought Vere, 
 but she did not say so ; she merely made the 
 deep curtsey she had learned at Bulmer Chase, 
 which had the serene and stately grace in it of
 
 MOTHS. 275 
 
 another century than her own, and, without 
 another word, passed out of the room. 
 
 ' Quel enfamt terrible I ' 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. 
 t2
 
 276 MOTHS. 
 
 ' I do my own duty ; that is enough for me/ 
 she would answer sweetly ; and, naturally, she 
 wondered why other women could not be simi- 
 larly content with doing theirs — when they had 
 a Position. Without a position she could ima- 
 gine, good woman though she was, that things 
 were very trying; and that people worried 
 more. As for herself, she had never worried, 
 and she had no sympathy with worry in 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 
 s^id something about his bishop '
 
 MOTHS, 277 
 
 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, I am 
 sure; and she must not persis: in it. You must 
 have common sense.' 
 
 ' But what can one do ? ' said Lady Dolly in 
 desperation. ' It 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 
 society abuses you, and I think the police even 
 can interfere, and the Lord Chancellor if she 
 have no father.' 
 
 And Lady Dolly sobbed afresh. 
 
 ' Dear little goose ! ' said Lady Stoat con- 
 solingly, but rather wearied. ' Of course no- 
 body 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, is^norant,
 
 278 MOTHS. 
 
 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 Vera 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. 
 
 Tier 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 everyone wants money nowadays.' 
 
 ' Except a Eussian,' said Lady Stoat, with 
 a smile. * Then, since you wish for him, take 
 him now he is to be bad. But I 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.'
 
 MOTHS. 279 
 
 * 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 convince 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 worth- 
 less. She had nothing of the mattresse femme 
 about her. She was always doing things that 
 she wished were undone, and knottino- en- 
 tanglements that she could not unravel. 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 con- 
 science, that was sluggish and fitful, and sleepy
 
 280 MOTHS, 
 
 and feeble, but not wholly dead. Only this 
 conscience, unhappily, was like a very tiny, 
 weak, swimmer stemming a very strong op- 
 posing tide. 
 
 Tn 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, Vere 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 cloudless, the sea 
 silvery in the moonlight; from the gardens 
 below there arose the scent of datnra and tube- 
 rose. It was all so peaceful 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 to her her tormentor and her tyrant. 
 
 What hurt her most was that her own 
 mother should urge this horror upon her.
 
 MOTHS. 281 
 
 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. 
 
 ' Grandmama 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 Baireutli, 
 and make a career of it. There would be no 
 shame iu 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.
 
 282 MOTHS. 
 
 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) ; and 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 Zouroff's 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.
 
 MOTHS. 283 
 
 This niglit, 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 callous- 
 ness than she had previously shown. 
 
 Vere was still sitting in her own chamber, 
 trying to read, but, in truth, always thinking 
 of the bidding of Correze, ' Keep j^ourself 
 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 Buhner 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
 
 284 MOTHS. 
 
 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 
 Sergias 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 saying 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. Yere used to smile just as 
 you do. He would have taken the cachemire 
 to wrap an old woman up in, very probably ; 
 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
 
 MOTHS. 285 
 
 cost of young love. Eespect your father's 
 memory ? Stujff ! 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 9 ' echoed Lady Dolly with a little 
 laugh. ' I'm afraid that would make a very 
 naughty sort of place of Heaven. 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
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 mortellemeiit ennuyes Tun de Tautre que nous 
 lie pouvons plus nous quitter ! ' 
 
 Vere was silent. Her world of dreams was 
 turned upside down, and shaken rudely. 
 
 'You have no heart, Vere; positivel}' 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 thankfulness, and yet you hesitate ? ' 
 
 ' I do not hesitate at all,' said Vere quickly. 
 * I refuse ! ' 
 
 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 ZourofP so yourself, I 
 will tell him to-morrow. Listen, mother, I 
 have written to Bulmer, and I will go back 
 there. Grandmama will not refuse to take me 
 in, I shall be a trouble and care to you no
 
 MOTHS. 287 
 
 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 persever- 
 ance. 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 I shall be 
 free and no burden upon anyone.' 
 
 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 Fran9ais. 
 
 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? la belle 
 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 1 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.'
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 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 wonld say I was 
 right ; and I will tell this man to-morrow that 
 I loathe him; and, since surely he mustJbave 
 some pride to be stung, he will ask for me no 
 more then.' 
 
 '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.
 
 MOTHS. 289 
 
 leaning her head on her hands. Then she rang 
 and bade them post the letter to Bulmer ; the 
 dark and drearsome, but safe and familiar 
 home of her lost childhood. 
 
 The letter gone, she undressed and went to 
 bed. It was midnight. She soon was asleej). 
 
 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 moon- 
 beams 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 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 MOTHS. 
 
 liair dishevelled on her shoulders, her face 
 without false bloom and haggard as the face of 
 a woman of twice her own years. 
 
 ' Yere, Vere ! you can save me/ she mut- 
 tered, 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. Yere, Yere ! do not be cruel ; do not 
 misjudge me, but listen. You must marry 
 Sergius Zouroff.' 
 
 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 spec- 
 tators and witnesses against her. 
 
 Yere 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.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 On the morrow it was known to all the guests 
 of the house at which they were staying that 
 the head of the Princes Zonroff was to marry 
 the daughter of the Lady Dorothy Vander- 
 decken. 
 
 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 
 u2
 
 292 MOTHS. 
 
 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 ]petit entre at the 
 back of the house, and were met by no one but 
 some bowing servants. She had begged in a 
 little note that it might be so, making some 
 pretty plea for Yere 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 household 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 any- 
 thing more brilliant than usual was about to 
 take place.
 
 MOTHS. 293 
 
 ' You will come to breakfasfc ? ' said Ladj 
 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. 
 
 Yere 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 how hard a thing was 
 motherhood ! She had herself dressed beauti- 
 fully and took some ether.
 
 294 MOTHS. 
 
 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 
 bouqueb 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 Felicite 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
 
 MOTHS. 295 
 
 like that, how easy it would have been to have 
 become a good woman ! What could Yere 
 complain of? — the marriage was perfect 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 everyone must envy her. She had be- 
 trothed her daughter to one of the richest and 
 best born men in all Europe. "Was it not the 
 crown of 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
 
 296 MOTHS. 
 
 half plaintive, and with a flusli under lier 
 paint tliat made her look prettier than ever; 
 her eyes sparkled, her smile vs^as all sun- 
 shine and sweetness, she pressed the hands of 
 her most intimate friends with an eloquent 
 tenderness, she was exquisitely arrayed with 
 cascades of 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 com- 
 pliment to her aloud, said to himself: 
 
 * Brava, naughty Dolly ! Bis-his ! Will she 
 ever be like you, 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 agree- 
 able to brush it off himself, he was ready to 
 purchase it.
 
 MOTHS. 297 
 
 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, cliarmee ! ' to 
 impatient ears. 
 
 ' Such a beast as he is ! ' said the men who 
 smoked his cigars and rode his horses. 
 
 'And she who looked all ice and inno- 
 cence ! ' said the women, already in arms 
 against her. 
 
 Vere 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. 
 
 'Vera had a headache,' said Lady Dolly 
 serenely aloud. ' Or said so,' she murmured
 
 298 MOTHS. 
 
 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 Stichley, taking her friend aside 
 after breakfast. 'But how quickly you suc- 
 ceeded! 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. 
 
 ' 1 wonder what you did do,' she reflected, 
 however, as she laughed. ' Oh, naughty little 
 pussy — foolish, foolish little pussy! — to ha.ve 
 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.
 
 MOTHS. 299 
 
 ' 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 really 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 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
 
 800 MOTHS. . 
 
 the scent of the pastilles burning in the bodies 
 of blue china monsters. 
 
 Zouroff, who at times was very negligent 
 of his guests, w^as 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.
 
 MOTHS. 301 
 
 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 j^elaguine. 
 
 ' 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 sfirl with a g^Hsten 
 of tears in her eyes. 
 
 ' What a sacrifice ! what a martyrdom ! ' 
 she thought. 'Ah, the poor child! — but per- 
 haps he will ranger — let us hope.' 
 
 All the while Vera might have been made 
 of marble, she was so calm and so irrespon- 
 sive, and she never once lifted her eyes. 
 
 ' Will you not look at me once ? ' he en-
 
 302 MOTHS. 
 
 treated. 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 ! ' he said in 
 his teeth. But the compassion in him died 
 out almost as it was born, and the base appe- 
 tites in him were only whetted and made 
 keener by this knowledge. 
 
 Lady Stoat glided towards them and lifted 
 her lips to Yera'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.
 
 MOTHS. 303 
 
 ' You are only sixteen, and you will never 
 be young any more ! ' thought Princess Nela- 
 guine, 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 congratulations 
 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 : 
 
 Tor 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 Vere 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.
 
 304 MOTHS. 
 
 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 chere ! your new theories are astound- 
 ing. 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 my 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 pale. 
 Were you wise to leave your room out of good- 
 ness to us ? ' 
 
 ' I am cold,' murmured Vere faintly. ' I 
 should be glad if I might go away — for a little.' 
 
 'Impossible,' said the Princess; and added. 
 ' Dear, reflect ; it will look so strange to 
 people. My brother '
 
 MOTHS. 306 
 
 ' I will stay then,' said Vere 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 martyr- 
 dom, 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 beer 
 taught such strange ideas. 
 
 She was quite passive. 
 
 She resisted nothing ; having given away 
 in the one great thing, why should she dis- 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 MOTHS. 
 
 pute 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 
 stiUed, 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 ex- 
 treme pallor and the 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 coquettish little figure, semi-
 
 MOTHS. 307 
 
 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 scornfal 
 fire came into her own gaze, an unutterable 
 contempt and disgust watched wearily from 
 the fair windows of her soul. 
 
 She was thinkiog to herself as she looked : 
 Honour thy father and thy mother. That 
 was the old law ! Were there such women 
 then as she was now? Or was that law too 
 a dead letter, as the Marriage Sacrament was ? 
 
 ' 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 Royal High- 
 ness is too kind to think of her health, it is per- 
 fect ; indeed I may say, without exaggeration.
 
 308 MOTHS. 
 
 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. 
 
 Yere 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,' 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;
 
 MOTHS. 309 
 
 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 unconscious
 
 310 MOTHS. 
 
 look in them like those of eyes that have 
 recently lost their sight, and are not yet used 
 to the eternal darkness. 
 
 Bat 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; all 
 men looked, and wondered, and praised her, and 
 women said with a sigh of envy, 'Only sixteen! ' 
 
 Only sixteen ; and she might have said as 
 the young emperor ^ said, when he took his 
 crown, ' my youth, my youth ! farewell ! ' 
 
 Once her mother had the imprudence to 
 speak to her ; she whispered in her ear : 
 
 ' Are you not rewarded love ? Are you not 
 content ? ' 
 
 Yere 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 Northumbrian home. 
 * Franz Josef.
 
 MOTHS. 311 
 
 ' My house must always be open for my dead 
 son's child, and my protection, such as it is, 
 will always be 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, sinning 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 1 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
 
 312 MOTHS. 
 
 Felicite 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 deserb, but she had a pretty apartment in the 
 Avenue Josephine. The marriage was 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 
 possible. 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 member of the great world
 
 MOTHS. 313 
 
 there is no solitude so complete as a city out of 
 its season. So she shut Vere 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 even- 
 ings. Yere 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 Diclone 
 infuriata; but time tempers everything, and 
 there were always consolations. The young 
 dandy who had won the Grand Prix was devoted
 
 314 MOTHS. 
 
 and amusing ; it conld 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, which 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 aiid 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
 
 MOTHS. 315 
 
 Paris. ' When you onglit 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 Yere. 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 deli- 
 cate investigation and shrewd observation to 
 bear upon the subject. But she could make 
 nothing of it. 
 
 ' I do what my mother wishes,' Yere 
 answered her, and answered 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 husband, my dear.' 
 
 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
 
 316 MOTHS. 
 
 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 Eussia 
 or Eussia against England ; but throw yourself 
 into it, and it will amuse you, and it will be a 
 safeguard to you from the dangers that beset 
 every beautiful young wife in the world. It is 
 a melancholy thing to confess, and a humilia- 
 ting one, but 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 Yere with more respect than she 
 had ever felt before for feather-headed little 
 pussy, since pussy had been able to do a
 
 MOTHS. 317 
 
 clever thing unaided, 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 
 ead to have a secret ! 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 httle reflection 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 spend- 
 thrift, or a dear little penniless creature that 
 one is afraid will never marry at all ; and, with 
 Vere's peculiar manners and notions, it might 
 have been very difficult. Happily, Zouroff has 
 only admired her lovely classic head, and has 
 never troubled himself about what is inside 
 it. I think she will be an astonishment to 
 him — rather. But, to be sure, after six
 
 318 MOTHS. 
 
 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 ! ' aiiswered her friend with a 
 modest sigh of depreciation. 'I have no pre- 
 tensions — 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. JVI.ay your Yere be of the 
 number ! ' 
 
 ' I don't think she will ever be happy,' said 
 Lady Dolly impatiently, with a little confused
 
 MOTHS. 319 
 
 look of guilt. ' She doesn't care a bit about 
 dress.' 
 
 'That is a terrible laciine certainly/ as- 
 sented 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 vicar- 
 age lawn, and poor dead Vere 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 im- 
 patient 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
 
 320 MOTHS. 
 
 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 hanging over their gilded balconies ; 
 the liveried Suisse was yawning in the door- 
 way. 
 
 ' That is where your Faust-Romeo lives,' 
 said Lady Dolly, who could never bring her- 
 self 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 connois- 
 seur 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! 
 You might have been compromised for life ! ' 
 
 Yere'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 irrit- 
 ably ; ' ask anybody! an hour or two alone with 
 a man like that ruins a girl's name for ever.
 
 MOTHS, 321 
 
 Of course it was morning, and open air, but 
 still Correze is one of tliose persons a woman 
 canH be seen with, even ! ' 
 
 Vere turned lier 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 Zouroff'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. 
 
 ' If she be like that at sixteen what will 
 she be at six-and-twenty ? ' she thought. ' She 
 puts them in opposition already ! ' 
 
 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 Vere 
 might be at six-and-twenty would be the re- 
 sult of her own teaching, actions, and example. 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 MOTHS, 
 
 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 Vere could not be 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 be 
 the fault of B aimer, 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
 
 MOTHia. 323 
 
 near purity and sweetness as a human creature 
 can be, yet what does the world do with its 
 opening buds P — it thrusts them in the forcing 
 house amidst the ordure, and then, if they 
 perish prematurely, never blames itself. The 
 streets absorb the girls 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,' *•* 
 
 y 2
 
 CHiePTEE 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 shiver, 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 
 GiuUetta. 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
 
 MOTHS. 325 
 
 path and carpeted his carriage as if it were 
 April in the south, instead of November in 
 Austria. 
 
 His hand had just been pressed by an em- 
 peror'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 rest- 
 lessly 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.
 
 326 MOTHS. 
 
 The roses made him think of a little hedge-rose 
 gathered by a sweet-briar 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 pre- 
 sumption — yet it all left him careless and 
 almost cold. She had learned Juliet's part by 
 heart, but he had forgotten Romeo's — had left 
 it behind him in the opera-housa 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
 
 MOTHS. 327 
 
 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 rilievi, 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 had 
 roused him at seven that evening, saying that 
 it was the hour to drive to the theatre. He 
 had crushed the paper in his hand then and
 
 328 MOTHS. 
 
 thrown it down ; he took it np now, and looked 
 again in a corner of it in which there was an- 
 nounced 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 burniug 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 him- 
 self 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 floAvers 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
 
 MOTHS. 329 
 
 St. Petersburg: for the first weeks of the Kussian 
 New Year. 
 
 From Moscow he wrote to Lady Dolly. 
 When that letter reached Lady Dolly it 
 made her cry; it gave her a cn'se des nerfs. 
 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 faire 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 magnificence of the Zouroff bridal, 
 there was one that came anonymously, and of
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 which none knew the donor. It gave rise to 
 many conjectures 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 
 of 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 mean- 
 ing or some memory came with it. 
 
 It was the only gift amidst them all that 
 felt the kisses and tears of Vere. 
 
 ' 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
 
 MOTHS, 331 
 
 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 
 Zouroff, because it perplexed him. He never 
 spoke to Vere concerning it, for he believed 
 that no woman ever told the truth ; but he 
 tried to discover the donor by means of his 
 many servants and agents. He failed, not 
 because Correze had taken any especial means 
 to ensure secresy, but from simple accident. 
 
 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 Kussia. Therefore Zouroff 's 
 inquiries in Paris were all futile, and he 
 gradually ceased to think about the jewel.
 
 332 MOTHS. 
 
 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 aifront 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
 
 MOTHS. 333 
 
 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.' 
 
 Vere read the letter with the hot brazen 
 glow of the Paris sun streaming through the 
 rose silk of the blinds upon her, and each woi'd 
 stood out before her as if it were on fire, and 
 her cheek grew scarlet as if a blow w^ere 
 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 the 
 truth ! ' 
 
 Sin and shame, and all the horror of base 
 passions had been 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. 
 Pelagic. 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. 
 
 ' O mother, spare me ! Let me take back 
 my word ! ' she cried, unconsciously, as she
 
 334 MOTHS. 
 
 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 shone 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, indifferent to suffering or 
 humiliation, not believing, indeed, that she 
 ever caused either. 
 
 Living with her daughter, and finding that 
 no reproach or recrimination escaped Vere 
 against her. Lady Dolly had begun to grow 
 herself again. She was at times very nervous 
 with Vere, and never, if she could help it, met 
 her eyes, but she was successful, she was con- 
 tented, 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
 
 MOTHS. 335 
 
 calibre soon forget ; the only effort they have 
 ever to make is, on the contrary, to remember. 
 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. 
 
 ' Vera, my sweet Vera, 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 Vere 
 was a black Bible. I wonder what she will 
 send to you ? Another black Bible, perhaps. I
 
 MOTHS. 
 
 believe she gets Bibles cheap because she sub- 
 scribes to the men that go out to read Leviticus 
 and Deuteronomy to the negro babies ! ' 
 
 Vere 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 nisfht at 
 the chateau of Abba3'e aux Bois. 
 
 ' Will you, if you please, spare me all those 
 details ? ' she said, simply. ' Arran ge every- 
 thing as you like best, it will satisfy ine. But 
 let me hear nothing about it. That is all.' 
 
 ' You strange, dear creature ! Any other 
 
 girl ,' began Lady Doll 3^, 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,
 
 MOTHS. 337 
 
 loud murmur of traffic and music, and pleasure 
 and pain ; the sounds of tlie world, the world 
 to which Yere 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 home- 
 ward from their workshops— flower-makers, 
 glove-makers, clear- starchers, teachers of chil- 
 dren, 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, if only I had a 
 mother that loved me, a mother that was 
 honest and good ! ' 
 
 The very touch of her mother's hand, the 
 very sound of her laugh, and sight of her 
 
 VOL. I. z
 
 338 MOTHS, 
 
 smile, hurt lier ; slie had known nothing about 
 the follies and vices of the world, until suddenlj^, 
 in one moment, she had seen them all in- 
 carnated 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. 
 
 Yere had seen the moral cancer. And she 
 could not forget it, never could she forget it. 
 
 'When she was once beloved by my 
 
 father ! ' 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 of Paris. The girl 
 was passive and silent always. 
 
 When he kissed her hands only she trembled 
 from head to foot. 
 
 ' Are 3^ou afraid of me ? ' he murmured. 
 
 ' No ; I am not afraid.'
 
 MOTHS. 339 
 
 She could not tell him that she felt disgust 
 — disgust so great, so terrible, that she could 
 have sprung from the balcony and dashed 
 herself to death upon the stones. 
 
 ' Cannot you say that you like me ever so 
 little noAv ? ' 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 cannot tell you a falsehood.' 
 ' Will you never tell me one ? ' 
 ' No ; never.' 
 
 ' I do not believe you ; every woman lies.' 
 Yere did not answ^er 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.' 
 
 Vere stood aloof from him. The sunshine 
 shone on her fair head and the long, straight 
 folds of her white dress ; her hands were 
 zs2
 
 S40 MOTHS. 
 
 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 slie 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 ZourofiP 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 
 spent the night in drink and play, and saw the 
 sun rise with hot red eyes ; he could not change 
 because she was a saint.
 
 MOTHS. 841 
 
 Only a generation or two back his fore- 
 fathers had bought beautiful Persian women 
 by heaping up the scales of barter with strings 
 of pearls and sequins, and had borne ofiP Cir- 
 cassian 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 betrothed 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 fore- 
 fathers in Ukraine ; and besides, 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 all, her mother could not 
 have driven her so far unless ambition had 
 made her in a manner malleable. 
 
 Zouroff, in w^hose mind all w^omen were
 
 S42 MOTHS, 
 
 alike, had almost been brouglit 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 obedience could ac- 
 count 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 P ' 
 he said the next evening to Lady Dolly, as 
 they sat together in a box at the BoufPes. 
 . '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
 
 MOTHS. 343 
 
 things in the papers ; in society everybody is 
 very much like everybody else — no ? ' 
 
 Zouroff laughed; the little, short, hard 
 laugh that was characteristic 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 
 Helme, 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
 
 344 MOTHS. 
 
 when in another fortnight her daughter would 
 be Princess Zouroff. 
 
 ' Eeally, 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 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 could 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 
 corheille read like a milliners dream of heaven ;
 
 MOTHS. 345 
 
 the jewels given by the bridegroom were esti- 
 mated 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 con- 
 tained 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 ZourofP, fell for- 
 ward 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 ! Oh, what chaste 
 people they are, those English ! ' said a Eussian 
 Colonel of the Guard to Correze, as their 
 sledge flew over the snow on the Newski 
 Prospect.
 
 346 MOTHS. 
 
 Correze gave a sliudder 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 her 
 mother.^
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 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, 
 througfh whose stems the bine 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 jnarble 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 §tately
 
 848 MOTHS. 
 
 place a woman moved with a step that was 
 slow and weary, and yet very restless ; the step 
 of a thmg 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 morning. All women 
 envied her the riches of which those pearls 
 were emblem. She was Yera, 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 weari- 
 ness, 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 by ages from
 
 MOTHS. o49 
 
 that old sweet season of ignorance, of innocence, 
 of peace, of youth. 
 
 She was only sixteen still, but she was no 
 niore 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 revolted pride in her was like a living 
 thing buried under a weight of sand, and speech- 
 less, 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
 
 350 Moms. 
 
 looked at her from the mirror. To herself she 
 seemed fallen so low, sunk to such deep degra- 
 dation, 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 dis- 
 honour : what can the few words of a priest, or 
 the envy of a world, do to lighten that shame 
 to sacrificed innocence ? — 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 bitterness 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
 
 MOTHS. 351 
 
 was hateful ; all the gifts that were heaped on 
 her were like insult ; all the congratulations 
 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 Avhich 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.
 
 352 MOTHS. 
 
 Shame ? What shame could there be when 
 he was her husband? Strange fanciful ex- 
 aggeration ! — 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 Eomeo till all life seemed to 
 him a rose-garden, moonlit and made for sere- 
 nades ; these two might perhaps think with her, 
 and understand this intense revolt, this pas- 
 sionate repugnance, this ceaseless sense of un- 
 endurable, indelible reproach. But those were 
 all. Society would have given her no sympathy. 
 Society would have simpered and sneered. To 
 marry well ; that was the first duty of a 
 woman. 
 
 She had fulfilled it; she had been fortu- 
 nate ; how could she 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
 
 MOTHS, 863 
 
 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 armless Cupid of the Vatican, 
 copied in marble, stood amongst the rose of a 
 hundred leaves. 
 
 'How pale you are. That gown is too heavy 
 for you. Do you like this place ? ' 
 
 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.' 
 
 VOL. I. A A
 
 (354 MOTHS. 
 
 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 ridicu- 
 lous. 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 
 roughly. 
 
 ' Eoses do not become you ; you are not a
 
 MOTHS. 355 
 
 telle jardiniere ; you are a statue. This 
 place is dull, one tires of it ; we will go to 
 Eussia.' 
 
 * 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 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. 
 
 A A 2
 
 856 MOTHS. 
 
 ' 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 beauti- 
 ful 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 Eussia. You shall see a 
 ball in the Salle des Palmier s. The world is 
 best. Solitude is sweet for lovers, but not 
 when one of them is a statue — or an angel.
 
 MOTHS. 357 
 
 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 as 
 it is ' 
 
 He threw another rose into the sea, as if 
 in a metaphor of indifference. 
 
 'Come to breakfast,' he said carelessly. 
 * We will leave for Eussia 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 thinking of the nightingale that 
 was then singing in the Eussian 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. 
 
 ' Could you not leave me here ? ' she said 
 wistfully and a little timidly as she sat at the 
 breakfast-table.
 
 358 MOTHS. 
 
 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 ybur own.' 
 
 Vera 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 Eussia. 
 
 A few days later the gossip of St. Peters- 
 burg, in court and cafe, talked only of two
 
 MOTHS. 359 
 
 things — the approaching arrival of the new 
 beauty, Princess Zouroff, with the opening of 
 the long closed Zouroff Palace on the Newski 
 Prospect; and of the immense penalty paid 
 in forfeit by the great tenor, Correze, to escape 
 the last twenty nights of his engagement in 
 that 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 Zouroff, 
 and of her whom all the world called now, 
 and would call henceforward. Princess Vera. 
 
 END OP THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
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