else. I am very unhappy.... I am weak and contemptible...."

"Clotilde!" replied Marien, in an accent that went to Jacqueline's heart
like a knife.

She fancied that after this she heard the sound of a kiss, and, with her
cheeks aflame and her head burning, she rushed away. She understood
little of what she had overheard. She only realized that he had given
her up, that he had turned her into ridicule, that he had said
"Clotilde!" to her mother, that he had called her dear--she!--the woman
she had so adored, so venerated, her best friend, her father's wife, her
mother by adoption! Everything in this world seemed to be giving way
under her feet. The world was full of falsehood and of treason, and
life, so bad, so cruel, was no longer what she had supposed it to be.
It had broken its promise to herself, it had made her bad--bad forever.
She loved no one, she believed in no one. She wished she were dead.

How she reached her own room in this state Jacqueline never knew. She
was aware at last of being on her knees beside her bed, with her face
hidden in the bed-clothes. She was biting them to stifle her desire to
scream. Her hands were clenched convulsively.

"Mamma!" she cried, "mamma!"

Was this a reproach addressed to her she had so long called by that name?
Or was it an appeal, vibrating with remorse, to her real mother, so long
forgotten in favor of this false idol, her rival, her enemy?

Undoubtedly, Jacqueline was too innocent, too ignorant to guess the real
truth from what she had overheard. But she had learned enough to be no