ior, and replied to any compliments addressed to her
concerning Jacqueline with as much maternal modesty as if the dawning
loveliness of her stepdaughter had been due to herself.

"Her nose is rather too long-don't you think so? And she will always be
too dark, I fear." But she used always to add, "She is good enough and
pretty enough to pass muster with any critic--poor little pussy-cat!" She
became desirous to discover some tendency to ill-health in the plant that
was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have liked
to be able to assert that Jacqueline's health would not permit her to sit
up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to her, that
it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as she could
be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being ill, and
was calculating with impatience how many years it would be before she
could go to her first ball--three or four possibly. Was Madame de Nailles
in three or four years to be reduced to the position of a chaperon? The
young stepmother thought of such a possibility with horror. Her anxiety
on this subject, however, as well as several other anxieties, was so well
concealed that even her husband suspected nothing.

The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved
made M. de Nailles very happy. He had but one thing to complain of in his
wife, and that thing was very small. Since she had married she had
completely given up her painting. He had no knowledge of art himself, and
had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity. The fact was
that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make a
living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her own
limited ability. Her practice of art, she said, had only served to give
her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized in her
dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and furniture.
Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was arranged to
perfection. She had a genius for decoration, for furniture, for trifles,
and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the tying of a ribbon,
or the arrangement of a nosegay.

"This is all I retain of your lessons," she said sometimes to Hubert
Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his
advice as to how to prepare herself for the "struggle for life."

This phrase was amusing when it proceede