going."

He looked at him affectionately and roguishly, and went away into his
own room: and then, when he was alone, he began to laugh quietly, and
laughed until he cried:

"Little minx!" he thought. "She was making a game of me! And he was
deceiving me, too. What a secret they made of it!"

From that moment he plucked out every personal thought of Jacqueline
from his heart: and, like a broody hen hatching her eggs, he hatched the
romance of the young lovers. Without seeming to know their secret, and
without betraying either to the other, he helped them, though they never
knew it.

He thought it his solemn duty to study Jacqueline's character to see if
Olivier could be happy with her. And, being very tactless, he horrified
Jacqueline with the ridiculous questions he put to her about her tastes,
her morality, etc., etc.

"Idiot! What does he mean?" Jacqueline would think angrily, and refuse
to answer him, and turn her back on him.

And Olivier would be delighted to see Jacqueline paying no more
attention to Christophe. And Christophe would be overjoyed at seeing
Olivier's happiness. His joy was patent, and revealed itself much more
obstreperously than Olivier's. And as Jacqueline could not explain it,
and never dreamed that Christophe had a much clearer knowledge of their
love than she had herself, she thought him unbearable: she could not
understand how Olivier could be so infatuated with such a vulgar,