But Giselle, without thanking Jacqueline for the chocolate, exclaimed at once:  “Mon Dieu!  What has been the matter with you?”

She spoke rather louder than usual, it being understood that conversations were to be carried on in a low tone, so as not to interfere with those of other persons.  She added:  “I find you so altered.”

“Yes—­I have been ill,” said Jacqueline, carelessly, “sorrow has made me ill,” she added, in a whisper, looking to see whether the nun, who was discreetly keeping watch, walking to and fro behind the grille, might chance to be listening.  “Oh, ask me no questions!  I must never tell you—­but for me, you must know—­the happiness of my life is at an end—­is at an end—­”

She felt herself to be very interesting while she was speaking thus; her sorrows were somewhat assuaged.  There was undoubtedly a certain pleasure in letting some one look down into the unfathomable, mysterious depths of a suffering soul.

She had expected much curiosity on the part of Giselle, and had resolved beforehand to give her no answers; but Giselle only sighed, and said, softly: 

“Ah—­my poor darling!  I, too, am very unhappy.  If you only knew—­”

“How?  Good heavens! what can have happened to you here?”

“Here? oh! nothing, of course; but this year I am to leave the convent—­and I think I can guess what will then be before me.”

Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle, with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till she had passed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into Jacqueline’s ear.

From a few words that had passed between her grandmother and Madame d’Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.

“But that need not make you unhappy,” said Jacqueline, “unless he is really distasteful to you.”

“That is what I am not sure about—­perhaps he is not the one I think.  But I hardly know why—­I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one of our neighbors in the country.  Grandmamma has several times spoken in my presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates—­they touch each other—­oh!  I know her ideas! she wants a man well-born, one who has a position in the world—­some one, as she says, who knows something of life—­that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not much hair on his head—­like Monsieur de Talbrun.”

“Is he very ugly—­this Monsieur de Talbrun?”

“He’s not ugly—­and not handsome.  But, just think! he is thirty-four!”

Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste in such matters.

“That’s twice my age,” sighed Giselle.

“Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your age—­for instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and a hundred and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year—­but really to be twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than yourself.”