It was by such real services that Marien endeavored
to repay the friendship and the kindness always awaiting
him in the small house in the Parc Monceau, where
we have just seen Jacqueline eagerly offering him
some spiced cakes. To complete what seemed due
to the household there only remained to paint the
curiously expressive features of the girl at whom
he had been looking that very day with more than ordinary
attention. Once already, when Jacqueline was
hardly out of baby-clothes, the great painter had
made an admirable sketch of her tousled head, a sketch
in which she looked like a little imp of darkness,
and this sketch Madame de Nailles took pains should
always be seen, but it bore no resemblance to the
slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming,
whatever might be done to arrest her development,
a beautiful young woman. Jacqueline disliked
to look at that picture. It seemed to do her an
injury by associating her with her nursery. Probably
that was the reason why she had been so pleased to
hear Hubert Marien say unexpectedly that she was now
ready for the portrait which had been often joked about,
every one putting it off to the period, always remote,
when “the may-pole” should have developed
a pretty face and figure.
And now she was disquieted lest the idea of taking
her picture, which she felt was very flattering, should
remain inoperative in the painter’s brain.
She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible.
Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason,
which she never talked about, the years that seemed
so short and swift to her stepmother seemed to her
to be terribly long. Marien himself had said:
“There is a great interval between a dream and
its execution.” These words had thrown cold
water on her sudden joy. She wanted to force
him to keep his promise—to paint her portrait
immediately. How to do this was the problem her
little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles’s
lap after the departure of their visitors, had been
endeavoring to solve.
Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother,
who for the most part willed whatever she wished her
to do? A vague instinct—an instinct
of some mysterious danger—warned her that
in this case her father would be her better confidant.
CHAPTER III
THE FRIEND OF THE FAY
A week later M. de Nailles said to Hubert Marien,
as they were smoking together in the conservatory,
after the usual little family dinner on Wednesday
was over:
“Well!—when would you like Jacqueline
to come to sit for her picture?”
“What! are you thinking about that?” cried
the painter, letting his cigar fall in his astonishment.
“She told me that you had proposed to make her
portrait.”
“The sly little minx!” thought Marien.
“I only spoke of painting it some day,”
he said, with embarrassment.
