as if
she understood the danger that awaited her. She gave him no chance of
speaking alone with her. She was friendly--nay, sometimes affectionate
when other people were near them, but more commonly she teased him,
bewildered him, excited him. After an hour or two spent in her society he
would go home sometimes savage, sometimes desponding, to ponder in his
own room, and in his own heart, what interpretation he ought to put upon
the things that she had said to him.

The more he thought, the less he understood. He would not have confided
in his mother for the world; she might have cast blame on Jacqueline.
Besides her, he had no one who could receive his confidences, who would
bear with his perplexities, who could assist in delivering him from the
network of hopes and fears in which, after every interview with
Jacqueline, he seemed to himself to become more and more entangled.

At last, however, at one of the soirees given every fortnight by Madame
de Nailles, he succeeded in gaining her attention.

"Give me this quadrille," he said to her.

And, as she could not well refuse, he added, as soon as she had taken his
arm: "We will not dance, and I defy you to escape me."

"This is treason!" she cried, somewhat angrily. "We are not here to talk;
I can almost guess beforehand what you have to say, and--"

But he had made her sit down in the recess of that bow-window which had
been called the young girls' corner years ago. He stood before her,
preventing her escape, and half-laughing, though he was deeply moved.

"Since you have guessed what I wanted to say, answer me quickly."

"Must I? Must I, really? Why didn't you ask my father to do your
commission? It is so horribly disagreeable to do these things for one's
self."

"That depends upon what the things may be that have to be said. I should
think it ought to be very agreeable to pronounce the word on which the
happiness of a whole life is to depend."

"Oh! what a grand phrase! As if I could be essential to anybody's
happiness? You can't make me believe that!"

"You are mistaken. You are indispensable to mine."

"There! my declaration has been made," thought Fred, much relieved that
it was over, for he had been afraid to pronounce the decisive words.

"Well, if I thought that were true, I should be very sorry," said
Jacqueline, no longer smiling, but looking down fixedly at the pointed
toe of her little slipper; "because--"

She stopped suddenly. Her face flu