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At night, when she was dancing with Wermant, or Cymier, or even Talbrun, or on horseback, an exercise which all the Blues were wild about, she was an audacious flirt, a girl up to anything; and in the morning, at low tide, she might be seen, with her legs and feet bare, among the children, of whom there were many on the sands, digging ditches, making ramparts, constructing towers and fortifications in wet sand, herself as much amused as if she had been one of the babies themselves.
When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own. "Oh! Madame, you can do anything you like with him!" The clever woman sighed: "So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains as much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de Talbrun? You will learn to know better, my dear."
As to M. de Talbrun, he was quite at his ease, as if he were accustomed to make love like a centaur; while the girl felt herself in peril of being thrown at any moment, and trampled under his horse's feet. At last she succeeded in striking her aggressor a sharp blow across the face with her riding-whip.
She stopped short, fearing she might have said too much, and indeed Fred looked at her anxiously. "You don't regret it, do you?" "You must ask Monsieur de Talbrun if he regrets it," she said, with a laugh.
"But, poor dear! she could care little for such things. All she wanted was to get back as quickly as she could into her usual clothes. She said to me, again and again: 'Pray God for me that I may be a good wife. I am so afraid I may not be. To belong to Monsieur de Talbrun in this world, and in the next; to give up everything for him, seems so extraordinary.
Had she not shown herself ungrateful and cowardly? People about whom the world talks, are they not sometimes quite as good as those who have not lost their standing in society, like M. de Talbrun? It seemed to her that, go where she would, she ran risks. The cynicism that is the result of sad experience was beginning to show itself in Jacqueline. "Oh, forgive me!" she said, feeling, contrite.
"Beg Madame de Talbrun to come in here," she said, repeating the order after her son; but she settled herself in her chair with an air more patient, more resigned than ever, and her lips were firmly closed. Giselle entered in her charming new gown, and Fred's first words, like those of Enguerrand, were: "How pretty you are!
M. de Talbrun liked ladies to be always well and always lively, and it was her duty to see that Giselle accommodated herself to his taste; sea-bathing, life in the open air, and merry companions, were the things she needed to make her a little less thin, to give her tone, and to take some of her convent stiffness out of her.
"Beg Madame de Talbrun to come in here," she said, repeating the order after her son; but she settled herself in her chair with an air more patient, more resigned than ever, and her lips were firmly closed. Giselle entered in her charming new gown, and Fred's first words, like those of Enguerrand, were: "How pretty you are!
"Just see in what a state you have brought home your poor horses." Jacqueline, pale and trembling, made no answer. M. de Talbrun, as he helped her to dismount, whispered, savagely: "Not a word of this!" At dinner, his wife remarked that some branch must have struck him on the cheek, there was a red mark right across his face like a blow. "We were riding through the woods," he answered, shortly.
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