“Oh, mon Dieu!” she cried, “how ugly!  I never should have supposed we could have been as ugly as that!  Why, his face is all the colors of the rainbow; who would have imagined it?  And he crumples up his little face like those things in gutta-percha.  My poor Giselle, how can you bear to show him!  I never, never could covet a baby!”

Giselle, in consternation, asked herself whether this strange girl, who did not care for children, could be a proper wife for Fred; but her habitual indulgence came to her aid, and she thought: 

“She is but a child herself, she does not know what she is saying,” and profiting by her first tete-a-tete with Jacqueline’s stepmother, she spoke as she had promised to Madame de Nailles.

“A matchmaker already!” said the Baroness, with a smile.  “And so soon after you have found out what it costs to be a mother!  How good of you, my dear Giselle!  So you support Fred as a candidate?  But I can’t say I think he has much chance; Monsieur de Nailles has his own ideas.”

She spoke as if she really thought that M. de Nailles could have any ideas but her own.  When the adroit Clotilde was at a loss, she was likely to evoke this chimerical notion of her husband’s having an opinion of his own.

“Oh!  Madame, you can do anything you like with him!”

The clever woman sighed: 

“So you fancy that when people have been long married a wife retains as much influence over her husband as you have kept over Monsieur de Talbrun?  You will learn to know better, my dear.”

“But I have no influence,” murmured Giselle, who knew herself to be her husband’s slave.

“Oh!  I know better.  You are making believe!”

“Well, but we were not talking about me, but—­”

“Oh! yes.  I understood.  I will think about it.  I will try to bring over Monsieur de Nailles.”

She was not at all disposed to drop the meat for the sake of the shadow, but she was not sure of M. de Cymier, notwithstanding all that Madame de Villegry was at pains to tell her about his serious intentions.  On the other hand, she would have been far from willing to break with a man so brilliant, who made himself so agreeable at her Tuesday receptions.

“Meantime, it would be well if you, dear, were to try to find out what Jacqueline thinks.  You may not find it very easy.”

“Will you authorize me to tell her how well he loves her?  Oh, then, I am quite satisfied!” cried Giselle.

But she was under a mistake.  Jacqueline, as soon as she began to speak to her of Fred’s suit, stopped her: