l not know
exactly the amount of her dot and the extent of her expectations?"

"You would lose. I have something else to think of--now and always."

"What?" she said, carelessly.

"You have forbidden me ever to mention it."

Silence ensued. Then Madame de Villegry said, smiling:

"I suppose you would like me to present you this evening to my friends
the De Nailles?"

And in fact they all met that evening at the Casino, and Jacqueline, in a
gown of scarlet foulard, which would have been too trying for any other
girl, seemed to M. de Cymier as pretty as she had been in her
bathing-costume. Her hair was not dressed high, but it was gathered
loosely together and confined by a ribbon of the same color as her gown,
and she wore a little sailor hat besides. In this costume she had been
called by M. de Talbrun the "Fra Diavolo of the Seas," and she never
better supported that part, by liveliness and audacity, than she did that
evening, when she made a conquest that was envied--wildly envied--by the
three Demoiselles Wermant and the two Misses Sparks, for the handsome
Gerard, after his first waltz with Madame de Villegry, asked no one to be
his partner but Mademoiselle de Nailles.

The girls whom he neglected had not even Fred to fall back upon, for
Fred, the night before, had received orders to join his ship. He had
taken leave of Jacqueline with a pang in his heart which he could hardly
hide, but to which no keen emotion on her part seemed to respond.
However, at least, he was spared the unhappiness of seeing the star of De
Cymier rising above the horizon.

"If he could only see me," thought Jacqueline, waltzing in triumph with
M. de Cymier. "If he could only see me I should be avenged."

But he was not Fred. She was not giving him a thought. It was the last
flash of resentment and hatred that came to her in that moment of
triumph, adding to it a touch of exquisite enjoyment.

Thus she performed the obsequies of her first love!

Not long after this M. de Nailles said to his wife:

"Do you know, my dear, that our little Jacqueline is very much admired?
Her success has been extraordinary. It is not likely she will die an old
maid."

The Baronne assented rather reluctantly.

"Wermant was speaking to me the other day," went on M. de Nailles. "It
seems that that young Count de Cymier, who is always hanging around you,
by the way, has been making inquiries of him, in a manner that looks as
if it had some meaning, as