my vocation, so please give up speaking to me
about matrimony."

"As you will," said Giselle, sadly, "but you will give great pain to a
good man whose heart is wholly yours."

"I did not ask for his heart. Such gifts are exasperating. One does not
know what to do with them. Can't he--poor Fred--love me as I love him,
and leave me my liberty?"

"Your liberty!" exclaimed Giselle; "liberty to ruin your life, that's
what it will be."

"Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your
eyes--this life of your own, Giselle. To leave one cage to be shut up
in another--that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are
others who like to use their wings to soar into the air. I like that
expression. Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your
lot is the only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman."

Giselle answered with a strange smile:

"You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great
things seem to have been revealed to me. When I hold him to my breast
I seem to understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family
ties and sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys. You can
not understand that now, but you will some day. You, too, will gaze
upon the horizon as I do. I am ready to suffer; I am ready for
self-sacrifice. I know now whither my life leads me. I am led, as it
were, by this little being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for
whom I was embroidering caps and dresses. You ask whether I am satisfied
with my lot in life. Yes, I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian
angel, thanks to my precious Enguerrand."

Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike
her cousin's usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with
the tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh,
it was in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the
Monredons and the Talbruns.

"How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear," she answered.
"You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are
not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you
feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your
example?"

"Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun," said the young wife, for the moment
forgetting herself.

"Do you mean to say--"

"I meant nothing, except that if you married Fred you would have had the
advantage of first knowing h