“Not at all,” said the unfortunate father, “I feel how much I ought to value your advice, and an alliance with your family would please me more than anything.”

He said the truth, for he was disturbed by seeing M. de Cymier so slow in making his proposals, and he was also aware that young girls in our day are less sought for in marriage than they used to be.  His friend Wermant, rich as he was, had had some trouble in capturing for Berthe a fellow of no account in the Faubourg St. Germain, and the prize was not much to be envied.  He was a young man without brains and without a sou, who enjoyed so little consideration among his own people that his wife had not been received as she expected, and no one spoke of Madame de Belvan without adding:  “You know, that little Wermant, daughter of the ’agent de change’.”

Of course, Jacqueline had the advantage of good birth over Berthe, but how great was her inferiority in point of fortune!  M. de Nailles sometimes confided these perplexities to his wife, without, however, receiving much comfort from her.  Nor did the Baroness confess to her husband all her own fears.  In secret she often asked herself, with the keen insight of a woman of the world well trained in artifice and who possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind, whether there might not be women capable of using a young girl so as to put the world on a wrong scent; whether, in other words, Madame de Villegry did not talk everywhere about M. de Cymier’s attentions to Mademoiselle de Nailles in order to conceal his relations to herself?  Madame de Villegry indeed cared little about standing well in public opinion, but rather the contrary; she would not, however, for the world have been willing, by too openly favoring one man among her admirers, to run the risk of putting the rest to flight.  No doubt M. de Cymier was most assiduous in his attendance on the receptions and dances at Madame de Nailles’s, but he was there always at the same time as Madame de Villegry herself.  They would hold whispered conferences in corners, which might possibly have been about Jacqueline, but there was no proof that they were so, except what Madame de Villegry herself said.  “At any rate,” thought Madame de Nailles, “if Fred comes forward as a suitor it may stimulate Monsieur de Cymier.  There are men who put off taking a decisive step till the last moment, and are only to be spurred up by competition.”

So every opportunity was given to Fred to talk freely with Jacqueline when he returned to Paris.  By this time he wore two gold-lace stripes upon his sleeve.  But Jacqueline avoided any tete-a-tete with him as if she understood the danger that awaited her.  She gave him no chance of speaking alone with her.  She was friendly—­nay, sometimes affectionate when other people were near them, but more commonly she teased him, bewildered him, excited him.  After an hour or two spent in her society he would go home sometimes savage, sometimes desponding, to ponder in his own room, and in his own heart, what interpretation he ought to put upon the things that she had said to him.