Parc Monceau, where we have just seen Jacqueline eagerly offering him
some spiced cakes. To complete what seemed due to the household there
only remained to paint the curiously expressive features of the girl at
whom he had been looking that very day with more than ordinary attention.
Once already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes, the great
painter had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head, a sketch in
which she looked like a little imp of darkness, and this sketch Madame de
Nailles took pains should always be seen, but it bore no resemblance to
the slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming, whatever might be
done to arrest her development, a beautiful young woman. Jacqueline
disliked to look at that picture. It seemed to do her an injury by
associating her with her nursery. Probably that was the reason why she
had been so pleased to hear Hubert Marien say unexpectedly that she was
now ready for the portrait which had been often joked about, every one
putting it off to the period, always remote, when "the may-pole" should
have developed a pretty face and figure.

And now she was disquieted lest the idea of taking her picture, which she
felt was very flattering, should remain inoperative in the painter's
brain. She wanted it carried out at once, as soon as possible.
Jacqueline detested waiting, and for some reason, which she never talked
about, the years that seemed so short and swift to her stepmother seemed
to her to be terribly long. Marien himself had said: "There is a great
interval between a dream and its execution." These words had thrown cold
water on her sudden joy. She wanted to force him to keep his promise--
to paint her portrait immediately. How to do this was the problem her
little head, reclining on Madame de Nailles's lap after the departure of
their visitors, had been endeavoring to solve.

Should she communicate her wish to her indulgent stepmother, who for the