Jacqueline
had taken it, she would shut her eyes, and resume, half asleep, her sad
reflections. These were always the same. What could be the tie between
her stepmother and Marien?

She tried to recall all the proofs of friendship she had seen pass
between them, but all had taken place openly. Nothing that she could
remember seemed suspicious. So she thought at first, but as she thought
more, lying, feverish, upon her bed, several things, little noticed at
the time, were recalled to her remembrance. They might mean nothing,
or they might mean much. In the latter case, Jacqueline could not
understand them very well. But she knew he had called her "Clotilde,"
that he had even dared to say "thou" to her in private--these were
things she knew of her own knowledge. Her pulse beat quicker as she
thought of them; her head burned. In that studio, where she had passed
so many happy hours, had Marien and her stepmother ever met as lovers?

Her stepmother and Marien! She could not understand what it meant. Must
she apply to them a dreadful word that she had picked up in the history
books, where it had been associated with such women as Margaret of
Burgundy, Isabeau of Bavaria, Anne Boleyn, and other princesses of very
evil reputation? She had looked it out in the dictionary, where the
meaning given was: "To be unfaithful to conjugal vows." Even then she
could not understand precisely the meaning of adultery, and she
set herself to solve it during the long lonely days when she was
convalescent. When she was able to walk from one room to another, she
wandered in a loose dressing-gown, whose long, lank folds showed that
she had grown taller and thinner during her illness, into the room that
held the books, and went boldly up to the bookcase, the key of which
had been left in the lock, for everybody had entire confidence in
Jacqueline's scrupulous honesty. Never before had she broken a promise;
she knew that a well-brought-up young girl ought to read only such
books as were put into her hands. The idea of taking a volume from those
shelves had no more occurred to her than the idea of taking money out of
somebody's purse; that is, up to this moment it had not occurred to her
to do so; but now that she had lost all respect for those in authority
over her, Jacqueline considered herself released from any obligation
to obey them. She therefore made use of the first opportunity that
presented itself to take down a novel of George Sand, wh