nd I think I can guess what will then be before me."

Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle,
with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till
she had passed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into
Jacqueline's ear.

From a few words that had passed between her grandmother and Madame
d'Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.

"But that need not make you unhappy," said Jacqueline, "unless he is
really distasteful to you."

"That is what I am not sure about--perhaps he is not the one I think. But
I hardly know why--I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one of our
neighbors in the country. Grandmamma has several times spoken in my
presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates--they touch each
other--oh! I know her ideas! she wants a man well-born, one who has a
position in the world--some one, as she says, who knows something of
life--that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not much
hair on his head--like Monsieur de Talbrun."

"Is he very ugly--this Monsieur de Talbrun?"

"He's not ugly--and not handsome. But, just think! he is thirty-four!"

Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste
in such matters.

"That's twice my age," sighed Giselle.

"Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your
age--for instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and
a hundred and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year--but really to
be twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than
yourself."

In the midst of this chatter, which was beginning to attract the notice
of the nun, they broke off with a laugh, but it was only one of those
laughs 'au bout des levres', uttered by persons who have made up their
minds to be unhappy. Then Giselle went on:

"I know nothing about him, you understand--but he frightens me. I tremble
to think of taking his arm, of talking to him, of being his wife. Just
think even of saying thou to him!"

"But married people don't say thou to each other nowadays," said
Jacqueline, "it is considered vulgar."

"But I shall have to call him by his Christian name!"

"What is Monsieur de Talbrun's Christian name?"

"Oscar."

"Humph! That is not a very pretty name, but you could get over the
difficulty--you could say 'mon ami'. After all, your sorrows are less
than mine."

"Poor Jacqueline!" sa