Giselle did not look up; she was devoting all her attention to Enguerrand.

Fred held certain theories which he used to talk about.  He believed in a high, spiritual, disinterested affection which would raise a man above himself, making him more noble, inspiring a disgust for all ignoble pleasures.  The woman willing to accept such homage might do anything she pleased with a heart that would be hers alone.  She would be the lady who presided over his life, for whose sake all good deeds and generous actions would be done, the idol, higher than a wife or any object of earthly passion, the White Angel whom poets have sung.

Giselle pretended that she did not understand him, but she was divinely happy.  This, then, was the reward of her spotless life!  She was the object of a worship no less tender than respectful.  Fred spoke of the woman he ought to have loved as if he meant to say, “I love you;” he pressed his lips on the auburn curls of little Enguerrand where his mother had just kissed him.  Day after day he seemed more attracted to that salon where, dressed with more care than she had ever dressed before, she expected him.  Then awoke in her the wish to please, and she was beautiful with that beauty which is not the insipid beauty of St. Agnes, but that which, superior to all other, is seen when the face reflects the soul.  All that winter there was a new Giselle—­a Giselle who passed away again among the shadows, a Giselle of whom everybody said, even her husband, “Ma foi! but she is beautiful!” Oscar de Talbrun, as he made this remark, never thought of wondering why she was more beautiful.  He was ready to take offense and was jealous by nature, but he was perfectly sure of his wife, as he had often said.  As to Fred, the idea of being jealous of him would never have entered his mind.  Fred was a relative and was admitted to all the privileges of a cousin or a brother; besides, he was a fellow of no consequence in any way.

While this platonic attachment grew stronger and stronger between Fred and Giselle, assisted by the innocent complicity of little Enguerrand, Jacqueline was discovering how hard it is for a girl of good birth, if she is poor, to carry out her plans of honest independence.  Possibly she had allowed herself to be too easily misled by the title of “companion,” which, apparently more cordial than that of ‘demoiselle de compagnie’, means in reality the same thing—­a sort of half-servile position.

Money is a touchstone which influences all social relations, especially when on one side there is a somewhat morbid susceptibility, and on the other a lack of good breeding and education.  The Sparks, father and daughter, Americans of the lower class, though willing to spend any number of dollars for their own pleasure, expected that every penny they disbursed should receive its full equivalent in service; the place therefore offered so gracefully and spontaneously to Mademoiselle de Nailles was far from being a sinecure.