e than woman had not Fred, and a
remembrance of the wrongs that he had suffered through Jacqueline, now
stood between them. For months he had been the prime object in her life;
her mission of comforter had brought her the greatest happiness she had
ever known. She tried to make him turn his attention to some serious
work in life; she wanted to keep him at home, for his mother's sake, she
thought; she fancied she had inspired him with a taste for home life. If
she had examined herself she might have discovered that the task she had
undertaken of doing good to this young man was not wholly for his sake
but partly for her own. She wanted to see him nearly every day and to
occupy a place in his life ever larger and larger. But for some
time past the conscientious Giselle had neglected the duty of strict
self-examination. She was thankful to be happy--and though Fred was a
man little given to self-flattery in his relations with women, he could
not but be pleased at the change produced in her by her intercourse with
him.

But while Fred and Giselle considered themselves as two friends trying
to console each other, people had begun to talk about them. Even Madame
d'Argy asked herself whether her son might not have escaped from the
cruel claws of a young coquette of the new school to fall into a worse
scrape with a married woman. She imagined what might happen if the
jealousy of "that wild boar of an Oscar de Talbrun" were aroused; the
dangers, far more terrible than the perils of the sea, that might
in such a case await her only son, the child for whose safety her
mother-love caused her to suffer perpetual torments. "O mothers!
mothers!" she often said to herself, "how much they are to be pitied.
And they are very blind. If Fred must get into danger and difficulty for
any woman, it should not have been for Giselle de Talbrun."

CHAPTER XVIII. "AN AFFAIR OF HONOR"

A meeting took place yesterday at Vesinet between the Vicomte de
Cymier, secretary of Embassy at Vienna, and M. Frederic d'Argy,
ensign in the navy. The parties fought with swords. The seconds of
M. de Cymier were the Prince de Moelk and M. d'Etaples, captain in
the--th Hussars; those of M. d'Argy Hubert Marien, the painter.
M. d'Argy was wounded in the right arm, and for the present the
affair is terminated, but it is said it will be resumed on M.
d'Argy's recovery, although this seems hardly probable, considering
the very slight