She silently handed back the letter to her stepmother.

“No more than I expected,” said the Baroness.

“Indeed?” replied Jacqueline with complete indifference.  She wished to give no opening to any expressions of sympathy on the part of Madame de Nailles.

“Poor Madame d’Avrigny,” she added, “has bad luck; all her actors seem to be leaving her.”

This speech was the vain bravado of a young soldier going into action.  The poor child betrayed herself to the experienced woman, trained either to detect or to practise artifice, and who found bitter amusement in watching the girl’s assumed ‘sang-froid’.  But the mask fell off at the first touch of genuine sympathy.  When Giselle, forgetful of a certain coolness between them ever since Fred’s departure, came to clasp her in her arms, she showed only her true self, a girl suffering all the bitterness of a cruel, humiliating desertion.  Long talks ensued between the friends, in which Jacqueline poured into Giselle’s ear her sad discoveries in the past, her sorrows and anxieties in the present, and her vague plans for the future.  “I must go away,” she said; “I must escape somewhere; I can not go on living with Madame de Nailles—­I should go mad, I should be tempted every day to upbraid her with her conduct.”

Giselle made no attempt to curb an excitement which she knew would resist all she could say to calm it.  She feigned agreement, hoping thereby to increase her future influence, and advised her friend to seek in a convent the refuge that she needed.  But she must do nothing rashly; she should only consider it a temporary retreat whose motive was a wish to remain for a while within reach of religious consolation.  In that way she would give people nothing to talk about, and her step mother could not be offended.  It was never of any use to get out of a difficulty by breaking all the glass windows with a great noise, and good resolutions are made firmer by being matured in quietness.  Such were the lessons Giselle herself had been taught by the Benedictine nuns, who, however deficient they might be in the higher education of women, knew at least how to bring up young girls with a view to making them good wives.  Giselle illustrated this day by day in her relations to a husband as disagreeable as a husband well could be, a man of small intelligence, who was not even faithful to her.  But she did not cite herself as an example.  She never talked about herself, or her own difficulties.

“You are an angel of sense and goodness,” sobbed Jacqueline.  “I will do whatever you wish me to do.”

“Count upon me—­count upon all your friends,” said Madame de Talbrun, tenderly.

And then, enumerating the oldest and the truest of these friends, she unluckily named Madame d’Argy.  Jacqueline drew herself back at once: 

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” she cried, “don’t mention them to me!”