Madame D’Argy did not leave her son in ignorance of all the freaks and follies of Jacqueline.  He knew every particular of the wrong-doings and the imprudences of his early friend, and even the additions made to them by calumny, ever since the fit of in dependence which, after her father’s death, had led her to throw off all control.  She told of her sudden departure from Fresne, where she might have found so safe a refuge with her friend and cousin.  Then had not her own imprudence and coquetry led to a rupture with the families of d’Etaples and Ray?  She told of the scandalous intimacy with Madame Strahlberg; of her expulsion from the convent, where they had discovered, even before she left, that she had been in the habit of visiting undesirable persons; and finally she informed him that Jacqueline had gone to Italy with an old Yankee and his daughter—­he being a man, it was said, who had laid the foundation of his colossal fortune by keeping a bar-room in a mining camp in California.  This last was no fiction, the cut of Mr. Sparks’s beard and his unpolished manners left no doubt on the subject; and she wound up by saying that Madame d’Avrigny, whom no one could accuse of ill-nature, had been grieved at meeting this unhappy girl in very improper company, among which she seemed quite in her element, like a fish in water.  It was said also that she was thinking of studying for the stage with La Rochette—­M. de Talbrun had heard it talked about in the foyer of the Opera by an old Prince from some foreign country—­she could not remember his name, but he was praising Madame Strahlberg without any reserve as the most delightful of Parisiennes.  Thereupon Talbrun had naturally forbidden his wife to have anything to do with Jacqueline, or even to write to her.  Fat Oscar, though he was not all that he ought to be himself, had some very strict notions of propriety.  No one was more particular about family relations, and really in this case no one could blame him; but Giselle had been very unhappy, and to the very last had tried to stand up for her unhappy friend.  Having told him all this, she added, she would say no more on the subject.

Giselle was a model woman in everything, in tact, in goodness, in good sense, and she was very attentive to the poor old mother of Fred, who but for her must have died long ago of loneliness and sorrow.  Thereupon ensued the poor lady’s usual lamentations over the long, long absence of her beloved son; as usual, she told him she did not think she should live to see him back again; she gave him a full account of her maladies, caused, or at least aggravated, by her mortal, constant, incurable sorrow; and she told how Giselle had been nursing her with all the patience and devotion of a Sister of Charity.  Through all Madame d’Argy’s letters at this period the angelic figure of Giselle was contrasted with the very different one of that young and incorrigible little devil of a Jacqueline.