o not make us gay--as I am."

"Then tell me--"

"No-no! I can not tell you yet. I must be silent two days more," said
Jacqueline, throwing herself into her mother's arms.

Madame de Nailles asked no more questions, but she looked at her
stepdaughter with an air of great surprise. For some weeks past she had
had no pleasure in looking at Jacqueline. She began to be aware that
near her, at her side, an exquisite butterfly was about for the first
time to spread its wings--wings of a radiant loveliness, which,
when they fluttered in the air, would turn all eyes away from other
butterflies, which had lost some of their freshness during the summer.

A difficult task was before her. How could she keep this too precocious
insect in its chrysalis state? How could she shut it up in its dark
cocoon and retard its transformation?

"Jacqueline," she said, and the tones of her voice were less soft than
those in which she usually addressed her, "it seems to me that you
are wasting your time a great deal. You hardly practise at all; you do
almost nothing at the 'cours'. I don't know what can be distracting your
attention from your lessons, but I have received complaints which should
make a great girl like you ashamed of herself. Do you know what I am
beginning to think?--That Madame de Monredon's system of education has
done better than mine."

"Oh! mamma, you can't be thinking of sending me to a convent!" cried
Jacqueline, in tones of comic despair.

"I did not say that--but I really think it might be good for you to make
a retreat where your cousin Giselle is, instead of plunging into follies
which interrupt your progress."

"Do you call Madame d'Etaples's 'bal blanc' a folly?"

"You certainly will not go to it--that is settled," said the young
stepmother, dryly.

CHAPTER V. SURPRISES

In all other ways Madame de Nailles did her best to assist in
the success of the surprise. On the second of June, the eve of
Ste.-Clotilde's day, she went out, leaving every opportunity for the
grand plot to mature. Had she not absented herself in like manner the
year before at the same date--thus enabling an upholsterer to drape
artistically her little salon with beautiful thick silk tapestries which
had just been imported from the East? Her idea was that this year she
might find a certain lacquered screen which she coveted. The Baroness
belonged to her period; she liked Japanese things. But, alas! the
charming object that awaited