Jacqueline | Page 5

to have a
reception-day in connection with that of her mamma, seemed like a
great basket of roses when all her friends assembled there, seated on
low chairs in unstudied attitudes: the white rose of the group was
Mademoiselle d'Etaples, a specimen of pale and pensive beauty, frail
almost to transparency; the Rose of Bengal was the charming Colette
Odinska, a girl of Polish race, but born in Paris; the dark-red rose was
Isabelle Ray-Belle she was called triumphantly--whose dimpled cheeks
flushed scarlet for almost any cause, some said for very coquetry. Then
there were three little girls called Wermant, daughters of an agent de
change--a spray of May roses, exactly alike in features, manners, and
dress, sprightly and charming as little girls could be. A little pompon
rose was tiny Dorothee d'Avrigny, to whom the pet name Dolly was
appropriate, for never had any doll's waxen face been more lovely than
her little round one, with its mouth shaped like a little heart--a mouth
smaller than her eyes, and these were round eyes, too, but so bright, and
blue, and soft, that it was easy to overlook their too frequently startled
expression.
Jacqueline had nothing in common with a rose of any kind, but she was
not the less charming to look at. Such was the unspoken reflection of a
man who was well able to be a judge in such matters. His name was
Hubert Marien. He was a great painter, and was now watching the
clear-cut, somewhat Arab--like profile of this girl--a profile brought out
distinctly against the dark-red silk background of a screen, much as we
see a cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from
which the artist has fashioned it. Marien looked at her from a distance,
leaning against the fireplace of the farther salon, whence he could see
plainly the corner shaded by green foliage plants where Jacqueline had
made her niche, as she called it. The two rooms formed practically but

one, being separated only by a large recess without folding-doors, or
'portires'. Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles's
chair, had often before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at
this moment. She had grown up, as it were, under his own eye. He had
seen her playing with her dolls, absorbed in her story-books, and
crunching sugar-plums, he had paid her visits--for how many years? He
did not care to count them.
And little girls bloom fast! How old they make us feel! Who would
have supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have
transformed itself so soon into what he gazed upon? Marien, as an artist,
had great pleasure in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head
surmounted by thick tresses, with rebellious ringlets rippling over the
brow before they were gathered into the thick braid that hung behind;
and Jacqueline, although she appeared to be wholly occupied with her
guests, felt the gaze that was fixed upon her, and was conscious of its
magnetic influence, from which nothing would have induced her to
escape even had she been able. All the young girls were listening
attentively (despite their more serious occupation of consuming
dainties) to what was going on in the next room among the grown-up
people, whose conversation reached them only in detached fragments.
So long as the subject talked about was the last reception at the French
Academy, these young girls (comrades in the class-room and at the
weekly catechising) had been satisfied to discuss together their own
little affairs, but after Colonel de Valdonjon began to talk complete
silence reigned among them. One might have heard the buzzing of a fly.
Their attention, however, was of little use. Exclamations of oh! and ah!
and protests more or less sincere drowned even the loud and somewhat
hoarse voice of the Colonel. The girls heard it only through a sort of
general murmur, out of which a burst of astonishment or of dissent
would occasionally break forth. These outbreaks were all the curious
group could hear distinctly. They sniffed, as it were, at the forbidden
fruit, but they longed to inhale the full perfume of the scandal that they
felt was in the air. That stout officer of cuirassiers, of whom some
people spoke as "The Chatterbox," took advantage of his profession to
tell many an unsavory story which he had picked up or invented at his

club. He had come to Madame de Nailles's reception with a brand-new
concoction of falsehood and truth, a story likely to be hawked round
Paris with great success for several weeks to come, though ladies on
first hearing it would think proper to cry out that they would not even
listen to it, and would pretend to look round them for their fans to