like you can always find defenders," said Giselle, tearing her
hand from her cousin's grasp.

Giselle was not herself at that moment. "But, for your own sake, it
would have been better he should have abstained from such an act of
Quixotism."

"Giselle! can it be that you think me guilty?"

"Guilty!" cried Madame de Talbrun, her pale face aflame. "A little more
and Monsieur de Cymier's sword-point would have pierced his lungs."

"Good heavens!" cried Jacqueline, hiding her face in her hands. "But I
have done nothing to--"

"Nothing except to set two men against each other; to make them suffer,
or to make fools of them, and to be loved by them all the same."

"I have not been a coquette," said Jacqueline, with indignation.

"You must have been, to authorize the boasts of Monsieur de Cymier. He
had seen Fred so seldom, and Tonquin had so changed him that he spoke in
his presence--without supposing any one would interfere. I dare not tell
you what he said--"

"Whatever spite or revenge suggested to him, no doubt," said Jacqueline.

"Listen, Giselle--Oh, you must listen. I shall not be long."

She forced her to sit down; she crouched on a foot stool at her feet,
holding her hands in hers so tightly that Giselle could not draw them
away, and began her story, with all its details, of what had happened
to her since she left Fresne. She told of her meeting with Wanda; of the
fatal evening which had resulted in her expulsion from the convent;
her disgust at the Sparks family; the snare prepared for her by Madame
Strahlberg. "And I can not tell you all," she added, "I can not tell
you what drove me away from my true friends, and threw me among these
people--"

Giselle's sad smile seemed to answer, "No need--I am aware of it--I know
my husband." Encouraged by this, Jacqueline went on with her confession,
hiding nothing that was wrong, showing herself just as she had been, a
poor, proud child who had set out to battle for herself in a dangerous
world. At every step she had been more and more conscious of her own
imprudence, of her own weakness, and of an ever-increasing desire to
be done with independence; to submit to law, to be subject to any rules
which would deliver her from the necessity of obeying no will but her
own.

"Ah!" she cried, "I am so disgusted with independence, with amusement,
and amusing people! Tell me what to do in future--I am weary of taking
charge of myself. I said so the other day to the Abbe