The next time Madame de Nailles saw her stepdaughter
she was dazzled by a radiant look in her young face.
“What has happened to you?” she asked,
“you look triumphant.”
“Yes—I have good reason to triumph,”
said Jacqueline. “I think that I have won
a victory.”
“How so? Over yourself?”
“No, indeed—victories over one’s
self give us the comfort of a good conscience, but
they do not make us gay—as I am.”
“Then tell me—”
“No-no! I can not tell you yet. I
must be silent two days more,” said Jacqueline,
throwing herself into her mother’s arms.
Madame de Nailles asked no more questions, but she
looked at her stepdaughter with an air of great surprise.
For some weeks past she had had no pleasure in looking
at Jacqueline. She began to be aware that near
her, at her side, an exquisite butterfly was about
for the first time to spread its wings—wings
of a radiant loveliness, which, when they fluttered
in the air, would turn all eyes away from other butterflies,
which had lost some of their freshness during the summer.
A difficult task was before her. How could she
keep this too precocious insect in its chrysalis state?
How could she shut it up in its dark cocoon and retard
its transformation?
“Jacqueline,” she said, and the tones
of her voice were less soft than those in which she
usually addressed her, “it seems to me that you
are wasting your time a great deal. You hardly
practise at all; you do almost nothing at the ‘cours’.
I don’t know what can be distracting your attention
from your lessons, but I have received complaints which
should make a great girl like you ashamed of herself.
Do you know what I am beginning to think?—That
Madame de Monredon’s system of education has
done better than mine.”
“Oh! mamma, you can’t be thinking of sending
me to a convent!” cried Jacqueline, in tones
of comic despair.
“I did not say that—but I really
think it might be good for you to make a retreat where
your cousin Giselle is, instead of plunging into follies
which interrupt your progress.”
“Do you call Madame d’Etaples’s
‘bal blanc’ a folly?”
“You certainly will not go to it—that
is settled,” said the young stepmother, dryly.
SURPRISES
In all other ways Madame de Nailles did her best to
assist in the success of the surprise. On the
second of June, the eve of Ste.-Clotilde’s
day, she went out, leaving every opportunity for the
grand plot to mature. Had she not absented herself
in like manner the year before at the same date—thus
enabling an upholsterer to drape artistically her little
salon with beautiful thick silk tapestries which had
just been imported from the East? Her idea was
that this year she might find a certain lacquered
screen which she coveted. The Baroness belonged
to her period; she liked Japanese things. But,
alas! the charming object that awaited her, with a
curtain hung over it to prolong the suspense, had nothing
Japanese about it whatever. Madame de Nailles
received the good wishes of her family, responded
to them with all proper cordiality, and then was dragged
up joyously to a picture hanging on the wall of her
room, but still concealed under the cloth that covered
it.
