Madame de Nailles, announcing that, having received orders to join the
Embassy to which he was attached at Vienna, he was about to depart at
once, with great regret that he should not be able to take leave of any
one. To Madame d'Avrigny he made apologies for having to give up his
part in her theatricals; he entreated Madame de Nailles to accept both
for herself and for Mademoiselle Jacqueline his deepest condolences and
the assurance of his sympathy. The manner in which this was said was all
it ought to have been, except that it might have been rather more brief.
M. de Cymier said more than was necessary about his participation in
their grief, because he was conscious of a total lack of sympathy. He
begged the ladies would forgive him if, from feelings of delicacy and a
sense of the respect due to a great sorrow, he did not, before leaving
Paris, which he was about do to probably for a long time, personally
present to them 'ses hommages attristes'. Then followed a few lines in
which he spoke of the pleasant recollections he should always retain of
the hospitality he had enjoyed under M. de Nailles's roof, in a way
that gave them clearly to understand that he had no expectation of ever
entering their family on a more intimate footing.

Madame de Nailles received this letter just as she had had a
conversation with a man of business, who had shown her how complete was
the ruin for which in a great measure she herself was responsible. She
had no longer any illusions as to her position. When the estate had been
settled there would be nothing left but poverty, not only for herself,
who, having brought her husband no dot, had no right to consider herself
wronged by the bankruptcy, but for Jacqueline, whose fortune, derived
from her mother, had suffered under her father's management (there
are such men--unfaithful guardians of a child's property, but yet good
fathers) in every way in which it was possible to evade the provisions
of the Code intended to protect the rights of minor children. In the
little salon so charmingly furnished, where never before had sorrow or
sadness been discussed, Madame de Nailles poured out her complaints to
her stepdaughter and insisted upon plans of strict economy, when M. de
Cymier's letter was brought in.

"Read!" said the Baroness, handing the strange document to Jacqueline,
after she had read it through.

Then she leaned back in her chair with a gesture which signified: "This
is the last st