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Updated: July 22, 2025
Vigorously cross-questioned by Madame de Nailles, who called upon her to tell all she knew, under pain of being dismissed immediately, she saw but one way of retaining her situation, which was to deliver up Jacqueline, bound hand and foot, to the anger of her stepmother, by telling all she knew of the childish romance of which she had been the confidante.
It was the time of day when Madame de Nailles was usually alone. Jacqueline went to her bedchamber, but she was not there, and a moment after she stood on the threshold of the little salon. There she stopped short, not quite certain how she should proceed, asking herself what would be her reception. "How shall I do it?" she thought. "How had I better do it?" "Bah!" she answered these doubts.
"Like that of good parents, such as we are," added M. de Nailles, ending her sentence with an expression of grateful emotion. For one moment the Baronne paled under this compliment. "What did you say to Madame d'Argy?" she hastened to ask. "I said we must give the young fellow's beard time to grow." "Yes, that was right. I prefer Monsieur de Cymier a hundred times over.
But do you think that Jacqueline will keep the secret till the picture is done?" "You don't know little girls; they are all too glad to have something of which they can make a mystery." "When would you like us to begin?" Marien had by this time said to himself that for him to hold out longer might seem strange to M. de Nailles.
It even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de Nailles belonged in some sort to the arrondissement, so proud were those who lived there of having their share in her charms. Another portrait that of M. de Nailles himself was sent down to Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were invited to come and look at it.
"But I have no influence," murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her husband's slave. "Oh! I know better. You are making believe!" "Well, but we were not talking about me, but " "Oh! yes. I understood. I will think about it. I will try to bring over Monsieur de Nailles."
Even Modeste, old Modeste, who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of her dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no ordinary step mother. It might have been truly said that Madame de Nailles had never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done anything contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles.
Then Madame de Villegry said, smiling: "I suppose you would like me to present you this evening to my friends the De Nailles?" And in fact they all met that evening at the Casino, and Jacqueline, in a gown of scarlet foulard, which would have been too trying for any other girl, seemed to M. de Cymier as pretty as she had been in her bathing- costume.
As he recalled what had taken place, the anger of Madame de Nailles in the matter of the picture seemed to him to have been extreme and unnecessary. Jacqueline was just at an age when young girls are apt to be nervous and impressionable; they had been wrong to be rough with one who was so sensitive. "Yes," she had said, frankly, "I am jealous; I want things to myself.
He is still himself, but who would have thought it was Fred!" He was not disconcerted, for he had acquired aplomb in his journeys round the globe, but he gave her a glance of sad reproach, while Madame de Nailles said, quietly: "Yes, really How are you, Fred? The tan on your face is very becoming to you.
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