MOTHS.
" That thing!"   gasped Lady Dolly.
"What is the matter with it?" said Vere,
timidly and perplexed.
" Matter?   It is indecent!"
" Indecent?" Vere colored all over the white
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.
Vere looked at the brilliant object when it
arrived, puzzled and troubled by it. She could
not understand it. It appeared to be cut off at
the shoulders and the knees.
" It is like what 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-mor-
row."
Vere's face crimsoned.          -
i   " But what covers one's legs and arms?"
" Nothing! what a little silly you are! I sup-
pose you have nothing the matter with them,
have "you? no mark, or twist, or anything? i
don't remember any when you were little. You
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 were 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 good-
ness' sake, child, don't be a prude, whatever you
ure. Prudes belong to Noah'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 mar-
riage for her with the young Duc de Tambour,
son of the Prince de Chambrée. The best alliance
she could think of at the minute; but then the
poor child had no dot,
" Mr. Vanderdecken?" said Lady Dolly, wak-
ing to the fact. " Oh, he is on tne 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 know. I never understand it myself.
Whenever people want mouey 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, Vere, you are very pretty? You willbe
very handsome.    Kiss me again, dear."
Vere did so, learning, by a kind of intuition,
that she must touch her mother without injur-
ing the artistic work of the maids and the " lit-
tle secrets." Then she stood silent and pas-
sive.
" She is an uncomfortable girl," thought Lady
Dolly once more. " And, dear me, so like poor
Vere! What a tall creature you are getting!"
she said, aloud. "You will be married in
another year."
"Oh, no!" said Vere, with a glance of
alarm.
' ' You unnatural child ! How on earth would
you like to live if you don't want to be mar-
ried?"
"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 orthodox persons laugh
when they hear what is amusing but irreverent.
" Why do you say such things?" she said, im-
patiently. " They are nonsense, and you don't
mean them."
"1 mean them—quite."
"Nonsense!" said Lady Dolly, who never
discussed with anybody, 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 liBve something to wear, and I have an
immense deal to do. Good-bye; you are very
pretty !"
"Who was that gentleman I saw?" asked
Vere, as her mother rose and kissed her once
more on her silky fair hair.    "Is he any rela-
tion of papa's?   He was very kind."
Lady Dolly colored 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—rec-
ollects 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 1 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.
Vere Herbert was left to herself. She was
not tired; she was strong and healthful, for all
the white-rose paleness of her fair skin; and a
twelve hour's tossing on the sea, and a day or
two's rumbling on the rail, had no power to
fatigue her. Her grandmother, though a hum-
drum and a cat, according to Lady Dolly, had
sundry old-fashioned notions from which the
girl had benefitted both in body aud mind, and
the fresh, strong air of Bulmer Chase—a breezy
old forest place on the Northumberland sea-
shore, where the morose old duchess found a
dower-house to her taste—had braced her physic-
ally, 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
woman, 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 Vere had spent her life at Bulmer
Chase not unhappily, varied only by an occa-
sional visit to Lady Dolly, who had always
seemed to the child something too bright and
fair to be mortal, and to have an enchanted ex-
istence, 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 of 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 Bulmer, 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 on the side of
the rough heathered hills, with the herons call-
ing across from one marshy pool lo 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 the 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,
whicli gradually swelled and grew larger, of
beautifully-dressed fairylike women, whose
laughter every now and then echoed up to her.
It was one unbroken current of harmonious
color, rolled out like a brilliant ribbon on the
fawn-colored sand against the azure sea.
"And have they all nothing to do but to
enjoy themselves?" thought Vere. It seemed
so. If Black Care were anywhere at TrouviUe,
as it was everywhere else in the world, it took
pains to wear a face like the rest and read its
Figaro.
She heard the door underneath unclose, and
from underneath the green veranda she saw her
mother saunter out. Three other ladies were
with her, and half a dozen men. They were
talking and laughing all at once, no one waiting
to be listened to or seeming to expect it; they
walked across the beach and sat down. They
put up gorgeous sunshades and outspread huge
fans; they were all twitter, laughter, color,
mirth.
All this going to and fro of gay people, the
patter of feet aud flutter of petticoats, amused
the girl to watch almost as much as if she had
been amidst it. There was such a sparkle of
sea, such a radiance of sunshine, such a rainbow
of color, that, though it would have composed
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 aud getting tired, one of 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 cause enough for
the eager welcome of the listless ladies; but
there was even a greater charm in his perfect
grace of movement and vivacity and airy ease;
he staid little time with any one, but wher-
ever be loitered a moment appeared to be the
center of all smiles. She did not know that he
was her admirer of the noon-day, 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 in-
imitable Adrienne.
Adrienne looked and smiled.
"Oh, that is M. de Corrèze."
"Corrèze!" Vere's eyes opened in a blaze
of eager wonder, and the color rose in her pale
cheeks.    " Corrèze!   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 beau Corrèze!"
"Ihave 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 himself 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 piviMre
d'amour!"
And Adrienne quite sighed with despair, and
then laughed.
Vere colored a little: Keziah did not dis-
course about men being love-philtres.
"Measure me for my clothes; lam tired,"
she said, with a childish coldness and dignity,
turning away from the window.
"lam entirely at mademoiselle's service,"
said Adrienne, with answering dignity. "Who-
ever has had the honor to clothe mademoiselle
has been strangely neglectful of her highest
interests."
"My clothes my highest interest! I never
think about them!"
' ' That is very sad. They are really farouche.
If Mademoiselle could behold herself------"
" They are useful," said Vere, 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 stud-books,
and her ever-open Bible.
" Measure me quickly," said Vere. She had
lowered the green jalousies, and would not
look out anv 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-colored, 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 her-
self a martyr to maternity, ran into the little
room where Vere 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.