ed more deep,
more dark, more dreadful from uncertainty, and Jacqueline felt that
thenceforward she could make no step in life without risk of falling into
it. To whom now could she open her heart in confidence--that heart
bleeding and bruised as if it had been trampled one as if some one had
crushed it? The thing that she now knew was not like her own little
personal secrets, such as she had imprudently confided to Fraulein
Schult. The words that she had overheard she could repeat to no one. She
must carry them in her heart, like the barb of an arrow in a secret
wound, where they would fester and grow more painful day by day.

"But, above all," she said at length, rising from her knees, "let me show
proper pride."

She bathed her fevered face in cold water, then she walked up to her
mirror. As she gazed at herself with a strange interest, trying to see
whether the entire change so suddenly accomplished in herself had left
its visible traces on her features, she seemed to see something in her
eyes that spoke of the clairvoyance of despair. She smiled at herself, to
see whether the new Jacqueline could play the part, which--whether she
would or not--was now assigned to her. What a sad smile it was!

"I have lost everything," she said, "I have lost everything!" And she
remembered, as one remembers something in the far-off long ago, how that
very morning, when she awoke, her first thought had been "Shall I see him
to-day?" Each day she passed without seeing him had seemed to her a lost
day, and she had accustomed herself to go to sleep thinking of him,
remembering all he had said to her, and how he had looked at her. Of
course, sometimes she had been unhappy, but what a difference it seemed
between such vague unhappiness and what she now experienced? And then,
when she was sad, she could always find a refuge in that dear mamma--in
that Clotilde whom she vowed she would never kiss again, except with such
kisses as might be necessary to avoid suspicion. Kisses of that kind were
worth nothing. Quite the contrary! Could she kiss her father now without
a pang? Her father! He had gone wholly over to the side of that other in
this affair. She had seen him in one moment turn against herself. No!--no
one was left her!.... If she could only lay her head in Modeste's lap and
be soothed while she crooned her old songs as in the nursery! But,
whatever Marien or any one else might choose to say, she was no longer a
baby. The bitter se