om feeling all the remorse she might
otherwise have felt for her share in Fred's departure. She told her
father, who the first time in her life addressed her with some severity,
that she could not be expected to love all the young men who might
threaten to go to the wars, or to fling themselves from fourth-story
windows, for her sake.

"It was very indelicate and inconsiderate of Fred to tell any one that
it was my fault that he was doing anything so foolish," she said, with
true feminine deceit, "but he has taken the very worst possible means
to make me care for him. Everybody has too much to say about this matter
which concerns only him and me. Even Giselle thought proper to write me
a sermon!"

And she gave vent to her feelings in an exclamation of three syllables
that she had learned from the Odinskas, which meant: "I don't care!" (je
m'en moque).

But this was not true. She cared very much for Giselle's good opinion,
and for Madame d'Argy's friendship. She suffered much in her secret
heart at the thought of having given so much pain to Fred. She guessed
how deep it was by the step to which it had driven him. But there was in
her secret soul something more than all the rest, it was a puerile, but
delicious satisfaction in feeling her own importance, in having been
able to exercise an influence over one heart which might possibly extend
to that of M. de Cymier. She thought he might be gratified by knowing
that she had driven a young man to despair, if he guessed for whose sake
she had been so cruel. He knew it, of course. Madame de Nailles took
care that he should not be ignorant of it, and the pleasure he took
in such a proof of his power over a young heart was not unlike that
pleasure Jacqueline experienced in her coquetry--which crushed her
better feelings. He felt proud of the sacrifice this beautiful girl had
made for his sake, though he did not consider himself thereby committed
to any decision, only he felt more attached to her than ever. Ever since
the day when Madame de Villegry had first introduced him at the house
of Madame de Nailles, he had had great pleasure in going there. The
daughter of the house was more and more to his taste, but his liking for
her was not such as to carry him beyond prudence. "If I chose," he would
say to himself after every time he met her, "if I chose I could own that
jewel. I have only to stretch out my hand and have it given me." And
the next morning, after going to sleep f