yes, alarming--alarming for the future. And all in vain! There was no
use in saying more. 'Mon Dieu'! had he no trust in her devotion to his
child, in her prudence and her foresight, that he must thwart her thus?
And she had always imagined that for ten years she had faithfully
fulfilled a mother's duties! What ingratitude from every one!
Mademoiselle Schult should be sent away at once. Jacqueline should go to
a convent. They would break off all intercourse with Marien. They had
conspired against her--every one.

And then she wept more bitterly than ever--tears of rage, salt tears
which rubbed the powder off her cheeks and disfigured the face that had
remained beautiful by her power of will and self-control. But now the
disorder of her nerves got the better of precautions. The blonde angel,
whose beauty was on the wane, was transformed into a fury. Her six-and-
thirty years were fully apparent, her complexion appeared slightly
blotched, all her defects were obtrusive in contrast with the precocious
development of beauty in Jacqueline. She was firmly resolved that her
stepdaughter's obtrusive womanhood should remain in obscurity a very much
longer time, under pretence that Jacqueline was still a child. She was a
child, at any rate! The portrait was a lie! an imposture! an affront!
an outrage!

Meantime M. de Nailles, almost beside himself, fancied at first that his
wife was going mad, but in the midst of her sobs and reproaches he
managed to discover that he had somehow done her wrong, and when, with a
broken voice, she cried, "You no longer love me!" he did not know what
to do to prove how bitterly he repented having grieved her. He
stammered, he made excuses, he owned that he had been to blame, that he
had been very stupid, and he begged her pardon. As to the portrait, it
should be taken from the salon, where, if seen, it might become a pretext