“When,” she cried, with all the fury of a lioness, “do you expect to come to the conclusion that my son is a suitable match for Jacqueline?  Do you imagine that I shall let him wait till he is a post-captain to satisfy the requirements of Mademoiselle your daughter—­provided he does not die in a hospital?  Do you think that I shall be willing to go on living—­if you can call it living!—­all alone and in continual apprehension?  Why do you let him keep on in uncertainty?  You know his worth, and you know that with him Jacqueline would be happy.  Instead of that—­instead of saying once for all to this young man, who is more in love with her than any other man will ever be:  ‘There, take her, I give her to you,’ which would be the straightforward, sensible way, you go on encouraging the caprices of a child who will end by wasting, in the life you are permitting her to lead, all the good qualities she has and keeping nothing but the bad ones.”

“Mon Dieu!  I can’t see that Jacqueline leads a life like that!” said M. de Nailles, who felt that he must say something.

“You don’t see, you don’t see!  How can any one see who won’t open his eyes?  My poor friend, just look for once at what is going on around you, under your own roof—­”

“Jacqueline is devoted to music,” said her father, good-humoredly.  Madame d’Argy in her heart thought he was losing his mind.

And in truth he was growing older day by day, becoming more and more anxious, more and more absorbed in the great struggle—­not for life; that might exhaust a man, but at least it was energetic and noble—­but for superfluous wealth, for vanity, for luxury, which, for his own part, he cared nothing for, and which he purchased dearly, spurred on to exertion by those near to him, who insisted on extravagances.

“Oh! yes, Jacqueline, I know, is devoted to music,” went on Madame d’Argy, with an air of extreme disapproval, “too much so!  And when she is able to sing like Madame Strahlberg, what good will it do her?  Even now I see more than one little thing about her that needs to be reformed.  How can she escape spoiling in that crowd of Slavs and Yankees, people of no position probably in their own countries, with whom you permit her to associate?  People nowadays are so imprudent about acquaintances!  To be a foreigner is a passport into society.  Just think what her poor mother would have said to the bad manners she is adopting from all parts of the globe?  My poor, dear Adelaide!  She was a genuine Frenchwoman of the old type; there are not many such left now.  Ah!” continued Madame d’Argy, without any apparent connection with her subject, “Monsieur de Talbrun’s mother, if he had one, would be truly happy to see him married to Giselle!”

“But,” faltered M. de Nailles, struck by the truth of some of these remarks, “I make no opposition—­quite the contrary—­I have spoken several times about your son, but I was not listened to!”