imagined that for ten years she had
faithfully fulfilled a mother's duties! What ingratitude from every one!
Mademoiselle Schult should be sent away at once. Jacqueline should go to
a convent. They would break off all intercourse with Marien. They had
conspired against her--every one.

And then she wept more bitterly than ever--tears of rage, salt tears
which rubbed the powder off her cheeks and disfigured the face that had
remained beautiful by her power of will and self-control. But now the
disorder of her nerves got the better of precautions. The blonde angel,
whose beauty was on the wane, was transformed into a fury. Her
six-and-thirty years were fully apparent, her complexion appeared
slightly blotched, all her defects were obtrusive in contrast with the
precocious development of beauty in Jacqueline. She was firmly resolved
that her stepdaughter's obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a
very much longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child.
She was a child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an
affront! an outrage!

Meantime M. de Nailles, almost beside himself, fancied at first that his
wife was going mad, but in the midst of her sobs and reproaches he
managed to discover that he had somehow done her wrong, and when, with a
broken voice, she cried, "You no longer love me!" he did not know what to
do to prove how bitterly he repented having grieved her. He stammered, he
made excuses, he owned that he had been to blame, that he had been very
stupid, and he begged her pardon. As to the portrait, it should be taken
from the salon, where, if seen, it might become a pretext for foolish
compliments to Jacqueline. Why not send it at once to Grandchaux? In
short, he would do anything she wished, provided she would leave off
crying.

But Madame de Nailles continued to weep. Her husband was forced at last
to leave her and to return to Jacqueline, who stood petrified in the
salon.

"Yes," he said, "your mamma is right. We have made a deplorable mistake
in what we have done. Besides, you must know that this unlucky picture is
not in the least like you. Marien has made some use of your features to
paint a fancy portrait--so we will let nobody see it. They might laugh at
you."

In this way he hoped to repair the evil he had done in flattering his
daughter's vanity, and promoting that dangerous spirit of independence,
denounced to him a few minutes before, but of which, up to that