Jacqueline, vol 1 | Page 9

I was only imagining a picture of you."
"But my portrait would be frightful."
"Possibly. But that would depend on the skill of the painter."
"And yet a model should be--I am so thin," said Jacqueline, with
confusion and discouragement.
"True; your limbs are like a grasshopper's."
"Oh! you mean my legs--but my arms...."
"Your arms must be like your legs. But, sitting as you were just now, I
could see only your head, which is better. So! one has to be accountable
for looking at you? Mademoiselle feels herself affronted if any one
stares at her! I will remember this in future. There, now! suppose,
instead of quarrelling with me, you were to go and cast yourself into
the arms of your cousin Fred."
"Fred! Fred d'Argy! Fred is at Brest."
"Where are your eyes, my dear child? He has just come in with his
mother."
And at that moment Madame de Nailles, with her pure, clear voice--a
voice frequently compared to that of Mademoiselle Reichemberg,
called:
"Jacqueline!"
Jacqueline never crossed the imaginary line which divided the two
salons unless she was called upon to do so. She was still summoned
like a child to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in
her, and who were kind enough to wish to see her--Madame d'Argy, for
example, who had been the dearest friend of her dead mother. The
death of that mother, who had been long replaced by a stepmother,
could hardly be said to be deeply regretted by Jacqueline. She

remembered her very indistinctly. The stories of her she had heard from
Modeste, her old nurse, probably served her instead of any actual
memory. She knew her only as a woman pale and in ill health, always
lying on a sofa. The little black frock that had been made for her had
been hardly worn out when a new mamma, as gay and fresh as the
other had been sick and suffering, had come into the household like a
ray of sunshine.
After that time Madame d'Argy and Modeste were the only people who
spoke to her of the mother who was gone. Madame d'Argy, indeed,
came on certain days to take her to visit the tomb, on which the child
read, as she prayed for the departed:
MARIE JACQUELINE ADELAIDE DE VALTIER
BARONNE DE NAILLES
DIED AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS
And such filial sentiment as she still retained, concerning the unknown
being who had been her mother, was tinged by her association with this
melancholy pilgrimage which she was expected to perform at certain
intervals. Without exactly knowing the reason why, Jacqueline was
conscious of a certain hostility that existed between Madame d'Argy
and her stepmother.
The intimate friend of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with
neither elegance nor beauty. She never had left off her widow's weeds,
which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth. In
the eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting
Duty, a kind of duty not attractive to her. That very day it seemed as if
duty inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was
deeply interesting to her. The impatient gesture that she made when her
mother called her might have been interpreted into: Bother Madame
d'Argy!
"Jacqueline!" called again the silvery voice that had first summoned her;
and a moment after the young girl found herself in the centre of a circle

of grown people, saying good-morning, making curtseys, and kissing
the withered hand of old Madame de Monredon, as she had been taught
to do from infancy. Madame de Monredon was Giselle's grandmother.
Jacqueline had been instructed to call her "aunt;" but in her heart she
called her 'La Fee Gyognon', while Madame d'Argy, pointing to her son,
said: "What do you think, darling, of such a surprise? He is home on
leave. We came here the first place-naturally."
"It was very nice of you. How do you do, Fred?" said Jacqueline,
holding out her hand to a very young man, in a jacket ornamented with
gold lace, who stood twisting his cap in his hand with some
embarrassment "It is a long time since we have seen each other. But it
does not seem to me that you have grown a great deal."
Fred blushed up to the roots of his hair.
"No one can say that of you, Jacqueline," observed Madame d'Argy.
"No--what a may-pole!--isn't she?" said the Baronne, carelessly.
"If she realizes it," whispered Madame de Monredon, who was sitting
beside Madame d'Argy on a 'causeuse' shaped like an S, "why does she
persist in dressing her like a child six years old? It is absurd!"
"Still, she can have no reason for keeping her thus in order to make
herself seem young. She is