That she was passionately attached to Jacqueline was proved by the affection the little girl conceived for her.  “We two are friends,” both mother and daughter often said of each other.  Even Modeste, old Modeste, who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of her dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no ordinary step mother.  It might have been truly said that Madame de Nailles had never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done anything contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles.  When anything went wrong it was Fraulein Schult who was reproached first; if there was any difficulty in the management of Jacqueline, she alone received complaints.  In the eyes of the “two friends,” Fraulein Schult was somehow to be blamed for everything that went wrong in the family, but between themselves an observer might have watched in vain for the smallest cloud.  Madame de Nailles, when she was first married, could not make enough of the very ugly yet attractive little girl, whose tight black curls and gypsy face made an admirable contrast to her own more delicate style of beauty, which was that of a blonde.  She caressed Jacqueline, she dressed her up, she took her about with her like a little dog, and overwhelmed her with demonstrations of affection, which served not only to show off her own graceful attitudes, but gave spectators a high opinion of her kindness of heart.

When from time to time some one, envious of her happiness, pitied her for being childless, Madame de Nailles would say:  “What do you mean?  I have one daughter; she is enough for me.”

It is a pity children grow so fast, and that little girls who were once ugly sometimes develop into beautiful young women.  The time came when the model stepmother began to wish that Jacqueline would only develop morally, intellectually, and not physically.  But she showed nothing of this in her behavior, and replied to any compliments addressed to her concerning Jacqueline with as much maternal modesty as if the dawning loveliness of her stepdaughter had been due to herself.

“Her nose is rather too long-don’t you think so?  And she will always be too dark, I fear.”  But she used always to add, “She is good enough and pretty enough to pass muster with any critic—­poor little pussy-cat!” She became desirous to discover 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.