Madame de Nailles was not mistaken in her stepdaughter;
she was very far advanced beyond her age, thanks to
the cruel wrong that had been done her by the loss
of her trust in her elders and her respect for them.
Her heart had had its past, though she was still hardly
more than a child—a sad past, though its
pain was being rapidly effaced. She now thought
about it only at intervals. Time and circumstances
were operating on her as they act upon us generally;
only in her case more quickly than usual, which produced
in her character and feelings phenomena that might
have seemed curious to an observer. She was something
of a woman, something of a child, something of a philosopher.
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.
There was screaming and jumping, and rushing out of
reach of the waves which came up ready to overthrow
the most complicated labors of the little architects,
rough romping of all kinds, enough to amaze and disconcert
a lover.
But no one could have guessed at the thoughts which,
in the midst of all this fun and frolic, were passing
through the too early ripened mind of Jacqueline.
She was thinking that many things to which we attach
great value and importance in this world are as easily
swept away as the sand barriers raised against the
sea by childish hands; that everywhere there must
be flux and reflux, that the beach the children had
so dug up would soon become smooth as a mirror, ready
for other little ones to dig it over again, tempting
them to work, and yet discouraging their industry.
Her heart, she thought, was like the sand, ready for
new impressions. The elegant form of M. de Cymier
slightly overshadowed it, distinct among other shadows
more confused.
And Jacqueline said to herself with a smile, exactly
what her father and Madame de Nailles had said to
each other:
“But I can not see any reason why we should
not take Jacqueline with us to Italy. She is
just of an age to profit by it.”
These words were spoken by M. de Nailles after a long
silence at the breakfast-table. They startled
his hearers like a bomb.
Jacqueline waited to hear what would come next, fixing
a keen look upon her stepmother. Their eyes met
like the flash of two swords.
The eyes of the one said: “Now, let us
hear what you will answer!” while the other
strove to maintain that calmness which comes to some
people in a moment of danger. The Baroness grew
a little pale, and then said, in her softest tones:
