raw!" and remained motionless, apparently overwhelmed,
with her face covered by one hand, but furtively watching the face of
the girl so cruelly forsaken.

That face told nothing, for pride supplies some sufferers with necessary
courage. Jacqueline sat for some time with her eyes fixed on the
decisive adieu which swept away what might have been her secret hope.
The paper did not tremble in her hand, a half-smile of contempt passed
over her mouth. The answer to the restless question that had intruded
itself upon her in the first moments of her grief was now before her.
Its promptness, its polished brutality, had given her a shock, but not
the pain she had expected. Perhaps her great grief--the real, the true,
the grief death brings--recovered its place in her heart, and prevented
her from feeling keenly any secondary emotion. Perhaps this man, who
could pay court to her in her days of happiness and disappear when the
first trouble came, seemed to her not worth caring for.

She silently handed back the letter to her stepmother.

"No more than I expected," said the Baroness.

"Indeed?" replied Jacqueline with complete indifference. She wished to
give no opening to any expressions of sympathy on the part of Madame de
Nailles.

"Poor Madame d'Avrigny," she added, "has bad luck; all her actors seem
to be leaving her."

This speech was the vain bravado of a young soldier going into action.
The poor child betrayed herself to the experienced woman, trained either
to detect or to practise artifice, and who found bitter amusement in
watching the girl's assumed 'sang-froid'. But the mask fell off at the
first touch of genuine sympathy. When Giselle, forgetful of a certain
coolness between them ever since Fred's departure, came to clasp her
in her arms, she showed only her true self, a girl suffering all the
bitterness of a cruel, humiliating desertion. Long talks ensued between
the friends, in which Jacqueline poured into Giselle's ear her sad
discoveries in the past, her sorrows and anxieties in the present, and
her vague plans for the future. "I must go away," she said; "I must
escape somewhere; I can not go on living with Madame de Nailles--I
should go mad, I should be tempted every day to upbraid her with her
conduct."

Giselle made no attempt to curb an excitement which she knew would
resist all she could say to calm it. She feigned agreement, hoping
thereby to increase her future influence, and advised her friend to s