MOTHS.
15
his arm was a spectacle so astonishing that there j eighty years old.
was a general lull for a moment in the conversa-   quite "
tion 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 her
Quite odd in her notions,
' Shall we play?" said Zouroff.
They began to play, most of them, at a little
roulette-table.  ' Musicians  were   interpreting,
divinely, themes of Beethoven and Schumann;
the great glass halls and marble courts of the
self. She did not want Zouroff, high and flowers were open with all their array of
mighty and rich and of great fashion though he bloom; the green gardens and gay terraces were
was; she meant to die an English duchess, and , without in the brilliancy of moonlight: the sea
she had only thrown over the unhappy Mull be- \ was not a score of yards away, sparkling with
cause she had found out he was poor. "And phosphorous and star-rays; but they were indif-
¦what's the use of being a duchess, if you don't i ferent to all these things. They began to play,
make a splash?" she said very sensibly to his and heeded nothing else. The music sounded
mother, when they talked it over. She had ; on deaf ears; the flowers breathed out odors on
.flirted with Muli shamelessly, but so she did closed nostrils; the summer night spread its
with scores of them; it was her way. She had . loveliness in vain; and the waters of salt wave
brought the way from America. She had young and fresh fountain murmured on unheeded,
men about her as naturally as a rat-catcher has i Play held them.
ferrets and terriers; but she meant to take her j Sergius Zouroff lost plenty of money to Lady
time before choosing one of them for good and Dolly, who went to bed at two o'clock, worried
.all.                                                                          I and yet pleased, anxious and yet exultant.
"What  a beautiful child she  is,"  thought!     Vere's room was placed next to hers.
Prince Zouroff, "and so indifferent!    Can she j     She looked in before passing on to her own.
possibly be naughty Dolly's daughter?"              | The girl lay sound asleep in the sweet dreamless
He was interested, and he, being skilled in ; sleeP of her lingering childhood, her hair scat-
such ways, easily learned the little there was to ! tered like gold on the pillows, her limbs in the
know about her,"whilst he took her through his love'y grace of a sei'eae and unconscious repose,
conservatories, and showed her Japan lilies, Lady Dolly looked at her as she slept, and an
Chinese blossoms that changed color thrice a uneasy pang shot through her.
day, and orchids of all climes and colors.                  " IJ he do mean that," she thought, " I sup-
The conservatories were really rare, and '¦¦ Pose ll would be horrible. A,nd how much too
:pleased her; but Prince Zouroff did not. His ; Pretty and too innocent she would be for him,—
.eyes were bold and cold, at once; they were red ! the beast!
too, and there was an odor of braudy on his : Then she turned away, and went to her own
breai h that came to her through all the scent of : chamber, and began the toilsome martyrdom of
.the flowers.    She did not like him.    She was  having her perruque unfastened and her night's
grave and silent. She answered what he asked,
but she did not care to stay there, aud looked
round for a chance of escape. It charmed Zou-
roff, who was so used to see women throw
themselves in his path that he found no pleasure
in their pursuit.
"Decidedly she   has been not  at all with
naughty Dolly!" he said to himself, and looked ;
at her with so much undisguised admiration in |
his gaze, that Vere, looking up from the blos-
soms of a gloxinia, blushed to the eyes, and felt
angry, she could not very well have told why.
" Your flowers are magnificent, and I thank
you, monsieur; but I am tired, and I will say
.good night," she  said, quickly,   with  a  little j
haughtiness of accent and glance which pleased I
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, and
it shall be yours."
He opened a door that led out of the last con-
servatory on to the foot of the great staircase;
and Vere, not knowing whether she were not
breaking all the rules of politeness and etiquette,
bent her head to him and darted like a swallow
up the stairs.
Sergius Zouroff smiled, and strolled back
.alone through his drawing-rooms, and went up
to Lady Dolly, and cast himself into a long, low
chair by her side.
" Ma chère, your lovely daughter did not ap-
preciate 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, hur-
riedly; she was half relieved, half frightened.
" 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! Mais de bon cœur! Anything
feminine, that runs away is only too delightful
in these times," said the prince, coolly. " Do
not change her. Do not tease her. Do not try
to make her like yourself. I prefer her as
she is."
Lady Dolly looked at him quickly. Was it
¦possible that already------?
Sergius Zouroff was lying back in his chair
with his eyes closed. He was laughing a little,
silently, in an unpleasant way that he had; he
had spoken insolently, and Lady Dolly could
not resent his insolence.
"You are very kind, prince," she said, as
negligently as she could, behina her fan.
"Very kind,   to treat a child's boutades as  a
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 too dread passages in
each short twenty-four hours; they are, the bore
of being "done up," and the bore of being " un-
done."    -
It is a martydom, but they bear it heroically,
knowing that without it they would be "nowhere,
—would be yellow, pallid, wrinkled, even per-
haps would be flirtationless, unenvied, shelved,
and worse than dead!
If Lady Dolly had said any prayers, she would
have said, "^hank God for Piver!"—
CHAPTER VIII.
It was a very pretty life at Félicité.
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 whicli was so worthy of more attentive
hearers than it ever got, the theater, pretty and
pimpant as a coquette of the last century, the
laughter, the brilliancy, the personal beauty of
the women assembled there, all made the life at
Félicité charming to the eye and the ear. Yet
amidst it all Vere felt, very lonely, and the only
friends she made were in the Irish horse that
they gave her to ride, and in the big Russian
hound that belonged to Prince Zouroff.
The men thought her lovely, but they could
¦ not get on with her; the women disliked her
I as much as they adored, or professed to adore,
J Fuschia Leach.
To Vere, who at Bulmer had been   accus-
; tomed to see life heldaserious and even solemn
I thing,—who bad been accustomed to the gravity
of age and the melancholy of a seafaring poor
and the Northern tillers of a thankless soil.— ]
nothing seemed so wonderful as the perpetual
gayety 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 j
others as utterly as they were forgotten here? j
She was always wondering, and there was no I
one to ask.
" You are horribly in earnest, Vere," said
her mother, pettishly.    " You should go and |
live with M-. rjladstone."
But to Vere it seemed more horrible to be al- !
ways    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
jl'irl's charm.    She has really seen nothing, you j had sold china and flowers at a fancy fair for a j
know, shut up in that old Northern  house by j hospital, or subscribed to the Society for Pre-
ihe sea; and she is as eccentric as if she were ' 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 lo
¦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. The}' are miniature women
already; they know the meaning of many a
dubious phrase; they know the relative value of
social positions; they know much of the science
of flirtation wliich society has substituted for
passion; they understand very thoroughly the
I shades of intimacy, the suggestions of a smile,
the degrees of hot and cold that may be marked
by a bow or emphasized with a "good day."
A.ll the subtle science of society is learned by
them instinctively and unconsciously, as they
learn French aud German from their maids.
When they are women they will at least never
haveNEve's excuse for sin; they will know
everything that any tempter could tell themr-
Perhaps their knowledge may prove their safe-
guard, 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
paug of disillusion when they shall be fairly out
in a world that they already know with cynical
thoroughness,—baby La Bruyères and Roche-
foucaulds in frills and sashes.
To Vere Herbert, on the contrary, reared as
she had been upon grave studies and in country
loneliness, the shock her faiths and fancies re-
ceived was very cruel. Sometimes she thought
bitterly she would have minded nothing if only
i her mother had been a thing she could have
reverenced, a creature she could have gone to
for support and sympathy.
i   TBut her mother was the most frivolous of
; the   whole sea  of  froth  around  her,—of   the
whole frivolous womanhood about her the very
emptiest bubbles—
Vere, who herself had been cast by nature in
the mold to be a noble mother of children, had
antique and 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 his-
tory and romance, were forever in her thoughts;
the time-honored word embodied to her all sac-
rifice, all nobility, all holiness. And hei;
mother was this pretty foolish painted toy,
with false curls in a sunny circlet above her
kohl-washed eyes, with her heart set on a cotil-
lon, 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 ' ' la moindre excuse pour paraître nue ! "
The thought of her mother, thus, hurt her, as
in revolutions it hurts those who believe ia
Mary to see a Madonna spit upon by a mob.
Lady Stoat saw this, and tried, in her fash-
ion, to console her for it.
" My dear, your mother is young stilk 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 somber as she heard.
" I do not like to waltz.    I never do."
"No, love? Well, temperaments differ. But
surely you wouldn't be so cruetjas to condemn
your mother only to have your inclinations,
wou\d you ? Dolly was always full of fun. I
think you have hot fun enough in you, per-
haps."
" But my father is dead."
" My dear, Queen Anne is dead ! Henri Qua-
tre est sur le Pont-Neuf. What other news will
you tell us? I am not saying, deaj, that you
should think less of your father's memory. It is
too sweet of you to feel so much, and very, very
rare, alas! for nowadays our children are so for-
getful, and we are so little to them. But still,
you know, your mamma is young, and so pretty
as she is, too, no one can expect her to shut her-
self up a recluse. Perhaps, had you been always
with her, things would have been different; but
she has always been so much admired and so
petted by every one that it was only natural—¦
only natural that------"