ght have asked more. It is true that
if you have been suddenly thunderstruck that may alter your
calculations--for it was very sudden, was it not? Venus rising from the
sea!"

"Please don't exaggerate! But you are not so cruel, seeing you are
always urging me to marry, as to wish me to take a wife who looks like a
fright or a horror."

"Heaven preserve me from any such wish! I should be very glad if my
little friend Jacqueline were destined to work your reformation."

"I defy the most careful parent to find anything against me at this
moment, unless it be a platonic devotion. The youth of Mademoiselle de
Nailles is an advantage, for I might indulge myself in that till we were
married, and then I should settle down and leave Paris, where nothing
keeps me but--"

"But a foolish fancy," laughed Madame de Villegry. "However, in return
for your madrigal, accept the advice of a friend. The Nailles seem to
me to be prosperous, but everybody in society appears so, and one never
knows what may happen any day. You would not do amiss if, before you
go on, you were to talk with Wermant, the 'agent de change', who has a
considerable knowledge of the business affairs of Jacqueline's father.
He could tell you about them better than I can."

"Wermant is at Treport, is he not? I thought I saw him--"

"Yes, he is here till Monday. You have twenty-four hours."

"Do you really think I am in such a hurry?"

"Will you take a bet that by this time to-morrow you will not know
exactly the amount of her dot and the extent of her expectations?"

"You would lose. I have something else to think of--now and always."

"What?" she said, carelessly.

"You have forbidden me ever to mention it."

Silence ensued. Then Madame de Villegry said, smiling:

"I suppose you would like me to present you this evening to my friends
the De Nailles?"

And in fact they all met that evening at the Casino, and Jacqueline,
in a gown of scarlet foulard, which would have been too trying for any
other girl, seemed to M. de Cymier as pretty as she had been in her
bathing-costume. Her hair was not dressed high, but it was gathered
loosely together and confined by a ribbon of the same color as her gown,
and she wore a little sailor hat besides. In this costume she had been
called by M. de Talbrun the "Fra Diavolo of the Seas," and she never
better supported that part, by liveliness and audacity, than she
did that evening, when she made a conquest that was envi