30
MOTHS.
I
shiver "you can have nothing worse in Rus
sia! Ah, my dear, precious Vera! I was so
shocked, so grieved!—to think that poor, little
angel was lost to us!"
" We will not speak of that," said Vere, in a
low voice, that was very cold and weary
" You are standing in the worst of the wind
will you not come into the house? Yes, I think
one feels the cold more here than in Russia.
People say so."
" Yes, because one has sunshades here, and
one sees those ridiculous palms, and it ought to
be warm if it isn't," answered Lady Dolly, but
her laugh was nervous and her lips trembled
and contracted as she thus met her daughter
once more.
" She is so unnatural!" she sighed to Princess
Nelaguine; "so unnatural! Nota word, even
to me, of her poor dear little dead child. Not a
word!   It is really too painful."
The Princess Nelaguine answered, dryly,
" Y our daughter is not very happy My brother
is not an angel. But then you knew very well,
chère madame, that he never was one."
" I am sure he seems very good," said Lady
Dolly, piteously, and with fretfulness. She
honestly thought it.
Vere had enormous jewels, constant amuse
ment, and a bottomless purse the mind of Lady
Dolly was honestly impotent to conceive any
state of existence more enviable than this.
"To think what I am content with!" she
thought to herself,—she, who had to worry her
husband every time she wanted a check, who
had more debts for dress and pretty trifles than
she would pay if she lived to be a hundred, aud
who constantly had to borrow half a crown for
a cup of tea at Hurlingham, or a rouleau of
gold to play with at Monaco.
Those were trials indeed!
" I hope you realize that you are my mother-
in-law," said Zouroff, as Lady Dolly sat on his
right hand and he gave her some grapes at
breakfast.
He laughed as he said it. Lady Dolly tried
to laugh, but did not succeed.
" You are bound to detest me," she said, with
an exaggerated little smile, " by all precedents
of fiction and of fact "
" Oh, no!" said Zouroff, gallantly: " never in
fiction or in fact had any man so bewitching
and youthful a mother-in-law. On my life, you
look no older than Vera."
"Oh-h!" said Lady Dolly, pleased but depre-
catory. " Vera is in a grand style, you know.
Women like her look older than they are at
twenty, but at forty they look much younger
than they are. That is the use of height and
straight features and Greek brows. --When one
is a little doll, like me, one must be resigned to
looking insignificant always^!__
" Is the Venus de' Medici insignificant? she
is very small," said Zouroff, still most gallantly;
and he added, in a lower key, " You were al-
ways pretty, Dolly, you always will be. lam
sorry to see that prayer-book : it looks as if you
felt growing old; and you will be wretched if
you once get that idea into your head."
" Ifeel young," said Lady Dolly, sentimental-
ly. "But it would sound ridiculous to pretend
to be so."
ERS* glance went to the graceful and dignified
presence of her daughter.
" Vere is very handsome, very beautiful," she
continued, hesitatingly. ' ' But — but — surely
she is not looking very well?"
"She is scarcely recovered," said Zouroff,
roughly; and the speech annoyed him. He
knew that his young wife was unhappy, but he
did not choose for any one to pity her, and for
her mother, of all people, to do so!------
"Ah! to be sure, no!" sighed Lady Dolly.
"It was so sad,—poor little angel! But did
Vera care much?   I think not."
" I think there is nothing she cares for," said
Zouroff, savagely. " Who could tell your
daughter would be a piece of ice, a femme de
marbre ?   It is too droll, Dolly."
" Pray do not call me Dolly," she murmured,
piteously.    "People will hear."
"Very well, madame mère!" said Zouroff,
and he laughed this time aloud.
She was frightened,—half at her own work,
half at the change wrought in Vere.#
" Who could tell she would alter so soon,"
she thought, in wonder at the cold, proud
woman" who looked like a statue and moved like
a goddess......__
" To think she is »nly seventeen!" said Lady
Dolly, aloud, in bewilderment.
" To be married to me is a liberal education,"
said her son in-law,  with his short  sardonic
laugh.
"I am sure you are very kind to her," mur-
mured poor little Lady Dolly, yet feeling herself
turn pale under her false bloom. " The beast!"
she said to herself, with a shudder. "The Cen-
taurs must have been just like him."
She meant the Satyrs
"Sergius," said Princess Nelaguine to her
brother that night, "Vera does not look well."
"No?" he answered, carelessly. "She is
always too pale. I tell her always to rouge.
If she do not rogue in Paris, she will scarcely
tell in a ball, handsome though she is."
" Rouge at seventeen ! You cannot be serious.
She only wants to be—happy. I do not think
you make her so.    Do you tiy?"
He stared and yawned.
"It is not my métier to make women happy
They can be so if they like. I do not prevent
them. She has ten thousand francs a month
by her settlements to spend on her caprices - if
it is not enough she can have more. You may
tell her so    I never refuse money."
" You speak like a bourgeois," said his sister,
with some contempt. "Do you think that
money is everything? It is nothing to a girl
like that. She gives it all to the poor : it is no
pleasure to her "
" Then she is very unlike her mother," said
Prince Zouroff, with a smile.
"She is unlike her, indeed! you should be
thankful to think how entirely unlike. Your
honor will be safe with her as long as she lives;
but to be happy—she will want more than you
give her at present, but the want is not one that
money will supply "
" She has been complaining?" said her
brother, with a sudden frown.
Madame Nelaguine added, with a ready lie,
"Not a word, not a syllable. But one has
eyes, and I do so wish you to be kind to her."
"Kind to her?" he repeated, with some sur-
prise. "I am not unkind, that I know of: she
has impossible ideas, they make me impatient.
She must take me and the world as she finds
us, but I am certainly not unkind One does
not treat one's wife like a saint. Perhaps you
can make her comprehend that. Were she sen-
sible, like others, she would be happy like
them."
He laughed, and rose and drank some ab-
sinthe.
His sister sighed, and set her teeth angrily on
the cigarette that she was smoking.
' ' Perhaps she will in time be happy and sen-
sible like them," she said to herself, "and then
your lessons will bear their proper fruits, and
you will be deceived like other husbands, and
punished as you merit. If it were not for the
honor of the Zouroffs, I should pray for it!"
The Villa Nelaguine was full of people stay-
ing there, and was also but five miles distant
from Monte Carlo.
Vere was never alone with her mother during
the time that Lady Dolly graced the Riviera
with her presence, carried her red umbrella
under the palm trees, and laid her borrowed
napoleons on the color.
No word of reproach, no word of complaint,
escaped her lips in her mother's presence, yet
Lady Dolly felt vaguely frightened, and longed
to escape from her presence, as a prisoner longs
to escape from the dock.
She staid this December weather at Villa-
f ranca, where December meant blue sea, golden
sunshine, and red roses, because she thought it
was the right thing to do. If there had been
people who had said—well, not quite nice
things—it was better to stay with her daughter
immediately on the return from Russia. So
she did stay, and even had herself visited for a
day or two by Mr. Vanderdecken on one of his
perpetual voyages from London to Java, Japan,
or Jupiter.
Her visit was politic and useful; but it cost
her some pain, some fretfulness, and some ap-
prehension.
The house was full of pleasant people, for
Zouroff never could endure a day of even com-
parative solitude; and amidst them was a very
handsome Italian noble, who was more agree-
able to her than the Duc de Dinant had of late
grown, and who was about to go to England to
be attached to the embassy there, and who had
the eyes of Othello with the manners of Chester-
field, and whom she made her husband cordially
invite to Chesham Place. She could play as
high as she liked, and she could drive over to
Monaco when she pleased, and no life suited her
better than this life, where she could, whenever
she chose, saunter through the aloes and palms
to those magic halls where her favorite fever
was always at its height, yet where everything
looked so pretty, and appearances were always
so well preserved, and she could say to every-
body, ' ' They do have such good music, one can't
help liking Monte Carlo!"
The place suited her in every way, and yet
she felt stifled in it, and afraid.
Afraid of what? There was nothing on earth
to be afraid of, she knew that.
Yet, when she saw the cold, weary, listless
life of Vere, and met the deep scorn of her
eyes, and realized the absolute impotency of
rank, and riches, and pleasure, and all her own
adored gods, to console or even to pacify this
young wounded soul, Lady Dolly was vaguely
frightened, as the frivolous are always frightened
at any strength or depth of nature or any
glimpse of sheer despair.
Not to be consoled!
What can seem more strange to the shallow?
What can seem more obstinate to the weak?
Not to be consoled is to offend all swiftly for-
getting humanity, most of whose memories are
writ on water.
" It is very strange, she seems to me to enjoy
nothing!" said Lady Dolly one morning to
Madame Nelaguine, when Prince Zouroff had
announced at the noonday breakfast that he had
purchased for his wife a famous historical dia-
mond known in Memoirs and in European
courts as the "Roc's egg," and Vere with a
brief word of thanks acknowledged the tid-
ings, her mother thought indignantly, as though
he had bought her a twopenny bunch of prim-
roses.
"It is very strange!" repeated Lady Dolly.
" The idea of hearing that she had got the big-
gest diamond in all the world, except five, and
receiving the news like that! Your brother
looked disappointed, I think, annoyed didn't
you?"
"If he want ecstasies over a diamond he can
give it to Noisette," said Madame Nelaguine,
with her little cold smile. " I think he ought
not to be annoyed that his wife is superior to
Noisette."
" Was Vera always as cold as that at St. Pet-
ersburg before her child's death?" pursued
Lady Dolly, who never liked Madame Nela-
guine's smiles.
"Yes; always the same."
"Doesn't society amuse her in the least?"
" Not in the least. I quite understand why
it does not do so. Without coquetry or ambi-
tion it is impossible to enjoy society much.
Every pretty woman should be a flirt, every
clever woman a politician; the aim, the animus,
the intrigue, the rivalry that accompany each
of those pursuits are the salt without which the
great dinner were tasteless. A good many
brainless creatures do, it is true, flutter through
society all their lives for the mere pleasure of
fluttering; but that is poor work, after all,"
added Madame Nelaguine, ignoring the pretty
flutterer to whom she was speaking "One
needs an aim, just as an angler must have fish
in the stream or he grows weary of whipping
it. Now; your Vera wil! never be a coquette,
because her temperament forbids it. She is too
proud, and also men have the misfortune not to
interest her. And I think she will never be a
politician; at least, she is interested in great
questions, but the small means by which men
strive to accomplish their aims disgust her, and
she will never be a diplomatist. In the first
week she was in Russia she compromised Ser-
gius seriously at the Imperial court by praising
a Nihilist novelist to the Empress!
" Oh, I know," laid Lady Dolly, desperately.
" She has not two grains of sense. She is beau-
tiful and distinguished-looking. When you
have said that you have said everything that is
to be said. The education she had with her
grandmother made her hopelessly stupid, actu-
ally stupid !"
" She is very far from stupid, pardon me,"
said Madame Nelaguine, with a delicate little
smile. "But she has not your happy adapta-
bility, chère madame.    It is her misfortune."
"A misfortune indeed," said Lady Dolly, a
little sharply, feeling that her superiority was
being despised. "It is always a misfortune to
be unnatural, and she is unnatural. She takes
no pleasure in anything that delights every one
else; she hardly knows serge from sicilienne;
she has no tact, because she does not think it
worth while to have any. \She will offend a
king as indifferently as she will change her
dress ; every kind of amusement bores her, she