a multitude of subjects; all day long
he was worrying her about small trifles with which he should have had
nothing to do. It is a mistake to suppose that a man can not be brutal
and fussy at the same time. M. de Talbrun was proof to the contrary.

"You are too patient," said Jacqueline often to Giselle. "You ought to
answer him back--to defend yourself. I am sure if you did so you would
have him, by-and-bye, at your beck and call."

"Perhaps so. I dare say you could have managed better than I do,"
replied Giselle, with a sad smile, but without a spark of jealousy. "Oh,
you are in high favor. He gave up this week the races at Deauville, the
great race week from which he has never before been absent, since our
marriage. But you see my ambition has become limited; I am satisfied if
he lets me alone." Giselle spoke these words with emphasis, and then she
added: "and lets me bring up his son my own way. That is all I ask."

Jacqueline thought in her heart that it was wrong to ask so little,
that poor Giselle did not know how to make the best of her husband, and,
curious to find out what line of conduct would serve best to
subjugate M. de Talbrun, she became herself--that is to say, a born
coquette--venturing from one thing to another, like a child playing
fearlessly with a bulldog, who is gentle only with him, or a fly buzzing
round a spider's web, while the spider lies quietly within.

She would tease him, contradict him, and make him listen to long pieces
of scientific music as she played them on the piano, when she knew he
always said that music to him was nothing but a disagreeable noise; she
would laugh at his thanks when a final chord, struck with her utmost
force, roused him from a brief slumber; in short, it amused her to prove
that this coarse, rough man was to her alone no object of fear. She
would have done better had she been afraid.

Thus it came to pass that, as they rode together through some of the
prettiest roads in the most beautiful part of Normandy, M. de Talbrun
began to talk, with an ever-increasing vivacity, of the days when
they first met, at Treport, relating a thousand little incidents which
Jacqueline had forgotten, and from which it was easy to see that he had
watched her narrowly, though he was on the eve of his own marriage. With
unnecessary persistence, and stammering as he was apt to do when moved
by any emotion, he repeated over and over again, that from the first
moment he had seen her