“But my portrait would be frightful.”

“Possibly.  But that would depend on the skill of the painter.”

“And yet a model should be—­I am so thin,” said Jacqueline, with confusion and discouragement.

“True; your limbs are like a grasshopper’s.”

“Oh! you mean my legs—­but my arms....”

“Your arms must be like your legs.  But, sitting as you were just now, I could see only your head, which is better.  So! one has to be accountable for looking at you?  Mademoiselle feels herself affronted if any one stares at her!  I will remember this in future.  There, now! suppose, instead of quarrelling with me, you were to go and cast yourself into the arms of your cousin Fred.”

“Fred!  Fred d’Argy!  Fred is at Brest.”

“Where are your eyes, my dear child?  He has just come in with his mother.”

And at that moment Madame de Nailles, with her pure, clear voice—­a voice frequently compared to that of Mademoiselle Reichemberg, called: 

“Jacqueline!”

Jacqueline never crossed the imaginary line which divided the two salons unless she was called upon to do so.  She was still summoned like a child to speak to certain persons who took an especial interest in her, and who were kind enough to wish to see her—­Madame d’Argy, for example, who had been the dearest friend of her dead mother.  The death of that mother, who had been long replaced by a stepmother, could hardly be said to be deeply regretted by Jacqueline.  She remembered her very indistinctly.  The stories of her she had heard from Modeste, her old nurse, probably served her instead of any actual memory.  She knew her only as a woman pale and in ill health, always lying on a sofa.  The little black frock that had been made for her had been hardly worn out when a new mamma, as gay and fresh as the other had been sick and suffering, had come into the household like a ray of sunshine.

After that time Madame d’Argy and Modeste were the only people who spoke to her of the mother who was gone.  Madame d’Argy, indeed, came on certain days to take her to visit the tomb, on which the child read, as she prayed for the departed: 

Marie Jacqueline Adelaide de VALTIER

Baronne de Nailles

Died aged twenty-six years

And such filial sentiment as she still retained, concerning the unknown being who had been her mother, was tinged by her association with this melancholy pilgrimage which she was expected to perform at certain intervals.  Without exactly knowing the reason why, Jacqueline was conscious of a certain hostility that existed between Madame d’Argy and her stepmother.

The intimate friend of the first Madame de Nailles was a woman with neither elegance nor beauty.  She never had left off her widow’s weeds, which she had worn since she had lost her husband in early youth.  In the eyes of Jacqueline her sombre figure personified austere, exacting Duty, a kind of duty not attractive to her.  That very day it seemed as if duty inconveniently stepped in to break up a conversation that was deeply interesting to her.  The impatient gesture that she made when her mother called her might have been interpreted into:  Bother Madame d’Argy!