rose was tiny Dorothee d'Avrigny, to whom the pet name Dolly was
appropriate, for never had any doll's waxen face been more lovely than
her little round one, with its mouth shaped like a little heart--a mouth
smaller than her eyes, and these were round eyes, too, but so bright, and
blue, and soft, that it was easy to overlook their too frequently
startled expression.

Jacqueline had nothing in common with a rose of any kind, but she was not
the less charming to look at. Such was the unspoken reflection of a man
who was well able to be a judge in such matters. His name was Hubert
Marien. He was a great painter, and was now watching the clear-cut,
somewhat Arab--like profile of this girl--a profile brought out
distinctly against the dark-red silk background of a screen, much as we
see a cameo stand out in sharp relief from the glittering stone from
which the artist has fashioned it. Marien looked at her from a distance,
leaning against the fireplace of the farther salon, whence he could see
plainly the corner shaded by green foliage plants where Jacqueline had
made her niche, as she called it. The two rooms formed practically but
one, being separated only by a large recess without folding-doors, or
'portires'. Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles's
chair, had often before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at this
moment. She had grown up, as it were, under his own eye. He had seen
her playing with her dolls, absorbed in her story-books, and crunching
sugar-plums, he had paid her visits--for how many years? He did not care
to count them.

And little girls bloom fast! How old they make us feel! Who would have
supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have transformed
itself so soon into what he gazed upon? Marien, as an artist, had great
pleasure in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head