idea of taking her picture, which
she felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the
painter's brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible.
Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked
about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed
to her to be terribly long. Marien himself had said: "There is a great
interval between a dream and its execution." These words had thrown cold
water on her sudden joy. She wanted to force him to keep his promise--to
paint her portrait immediately. How to do this was the problem her
little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles's lap after the departure of
their visitors, had been endeavoring to solve.

Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother, who for
the most part willed whatever she wished her to do? A vague instinct--an
instinct of some mysterious danger--warned her that in this case her
father would be her better confidant.

CHAPTER III. THE FRIEND OF THE FAY

A week later M. de Nailles said to Hubert Marien, as they were smoking
together in the conservatory, after the usual little family dinner on
Wednesday was over:

"Well!--when would you like Jacqueline to come to sit for her picture?"

"What! are you thinking about that?" cried the painter, letting his
cigar fall in his astonishment.

"She told me that you had proposed to make her portrait."

"The sly little minx!" thought Marien. "I only spoke of painting it some
day," he said, with embarrassment.

"Well! she would like that 'some day' to be now, and she has a reason
for wanting it at once, which, I hope, will decide you to gratify her.
The third of June is Sainte-Clotilde's day, and she has taken it into
her head that she would like to give her mamma a magnificent present--a
present that, of course, we shall unite to give her. For some time past
I have been thinking of asking you to paint a portrait of my daughter,"
continued M. de Nailles, who had in fact had no more wish for the
portrait than he had had to be a deputy, until it had been put into his
head. But the women of his household, little or big, could persuade him
into anything.

"I really don't think I have the time now," said Marien.

"Bah!--you have whole two months before you. What can absorb you so
entirely? I know you have your pictures ready for the Salon."

"Yes--of course--of course--but are you sure that Madame de Nailles
would approve of it?"