er some tendency to ill-health in the plant
that was too ready to bloom into beauty and perfection. She would have
liked to be able to assert that Jacqueline's health would not permit her
to sit up late at night, that fashionable hours would be injurious to
her, that it would be undesirable to let her go into society as long as
she could be kept from doing so. But Jacqueline persisted in never being
ill, and was calculating with impatience how many years it would be
before she could go to her first ball--three or four possibly. Was
Madame de Nailles in three or four years to be reduced to the position
of a chaperon? The young stepmother thought of such a possibility with
horror. Her anxiety on this subject, however, as well as several
other anxieties, was so well concealed that even her husband suspected
nothing.

The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved
made M. de Nailles very happy. He had but one thing to complain of in
his wife, and that thing was very small. Since she had married she had
completely given up her painting. He had no knowledge of art himself,
and had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity. The fact
was that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make
a living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her
own limited ability. Her practice of art, she said, had only served to
give her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized
in her dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and
furniture. Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was
arranged to perfection. She had a genius for decoration, for furniture,
for trifles, and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the
tying of a ribbon, or the arrangement of a nosegay.

"This is all I retain of your lessons," she said sometimes to Hubert
Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his
advice as to how to prepare herself for the "struggle for life."

This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips.
What!--"struggle for life" with those little delicate, soft, childlike
hands? How absurd! She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard
her laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one. He, who had
befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the
Baroness in her prosperity the same respectful and discreet devotion he
had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker. He had sent a wond