At that moment the door was partly opened, and a servant announced “Monsieur l’Abbe Bardin.”

Madame d’Argy made a gesture which was anything but reverential.

“Well, to be sure—­this is the right moment with a vengeance!  What does he want!  Does he wish me to assist in some good work—­or to undertake to collect money, which I hate.”

“Above all, mother,” cried Fred, “don’t expose me to the fatigue of receiving his visit.  Go and see him yourself.  Giselle will take care of your patient while you are gone.  Won’t you, Giselle?”

His voice was soft, and very affectionate.  He evidently was not angry at what she had dared to say, and she acknowledged this to herself with an aching heart.

“I don’t exactly trust your kind of care,” said Madame d’Argy, with a smile that was not gay, and certainly not amiable.

She went, however, because Fred repeated: 

“But go and see the Abbe Bardin.”

Hardly had she left the room when Fred got up from his sofa and approached Giselle with passionate eagerness.

“Are you sure I am not dreaming,” said he.  “Is it you—­really you who advise me to marry Jacqueline?”

“Who else should it be?” she answered, very calm to all appearance.  “Who can know better than I?  But first you must oblige me by lying down again, or else I will not say one word more.  That is right.  Now keep still.  Your mother is furiously displeased with me—­I am sorry—­but she will get over it.  I know that in Jacqueline you would have a good wife—­a wife far better than the Jacqueline you would have married formerly.  She has paid dearly for her experience of life, and has profited by its lessons, so that she is now worthy of you, and sincerely repentant for her childish peccadilloes.”

“Giselle,” said Fred, “look me full in the face—­yes, look into my eyes frankly and hide nothing.  Your eyes never told anything but the truth.  Why do you turn them away?  Do you really and truly wish this marriage?”

She looked at him steadily as long as he would, and let him hold her hand, which was burning inside her glove, and which with a great effort she prevented from trembling.  Then her nerves gave way under his long and silent gaze, which seemed to question her, and she laughed, a laugh that sounded to herself very unnatural.

“My poor, dear friend,” she cried, “how easily you men are duped!  You are trying to find out, to discover whether, in case you decide upon an honest act, a perfectly sensible act, to which you are strongly inclined—­don’t tell me you are not—­whether, in short, you marry Jacqueline, I shall be really as glad of it as I pretend.  But have you not found out what I have aimed at all along?  Do you think I did not know from the very first what it was that made you seek me?