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"Oh! is it you who repeat such naughty scandals, Giselle? Where shall charity take refuge in this world if not in your heart? I am going your seriousness may be catching. Kiss me before I go." "No," said Madame de Talbrun, turning her head away. After this she asked herself whether she ought not to discourage Fred.
The experience through which Jacqueline had just passed was not calculated to fortify her or to elevate her soul. She felt for the first time that her unprotected situation and her poverty exposed her to insult, for what other name could she give to the outrageous behavior of M. de Talbrun, which had degraded her in her own eyes? What right had that man to treat her as his plaything?
"You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your example?" "Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun," said the young wife, for the moment forgetting herself. "Do you mean to say "
But at Treport no one seemed to mind her being stupid, and indeed M. de Talbrun hardly thought of her existence, up to the moment when they were all nearly caught by the first wave that came rolling in over the croquet-ground, when all the girls took flight, flushed, animated, and with lively gesticulation, while the gentlemen followed with the box into which had been hastily flung hoops, balls, and mallets.
She certainly looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be. To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on his hands.
"I did not have a chance. My old Modeste is very ill and asks me to come to her. I should never forgive myself if I did not go." "What, Modeste? So very ill? Is it really so serious? What a pity! But you will come back again?" "If I can. But I must leave Fresne to-morrow morning." "Oh, I defy you to leave Fresne!" said M. de Talbrun.
"Out of consideration for Madame de Talbrun," she said, "the convent consents to keep Mademoiselle de Nailles a few days longer a few weeks perhaps, until she can find some other place to go. That is all we can do for her." Jacqueline listened to this sentence as she might have watched a game of dice when her fate hung on the result, but she showed no emotion.
Those other players were queer little things; the three sisters Wermant were not wanting in chic, but, hang it! the sweetest flower of them all, to his mind, was the tall one, the dark one unripe fruit in perfection! "And a year or two hence," added M. de Talbrun, with all the self-confidence of an expert, "every one will be talking about her in the world of society."
Every one said: "Yes, indeed!" out of politeness, but, on leaving the mother's presence, would generally remark: "He is Monsieur de Talbrun in baby-clothes: the likeness is perfectly horrible!"
M. de Talbrun frightened her as much as ever, and she had looked forward to the comfort of weeping in the arms of Jacqueline, who, the last time she had seen her, had been herself so unhappy.
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