down as residents of Paris. Madame de Nailles superintended
the instruction of her stepdaughter with motherly solicitude, seconded,
however, by a 'promeneuse', or walking-governess, which left her free to
fulfil her own engagements in the afternoons. The walking-governess is
a singular modern institution, intended to supply the place of the
too often inconvenient daily governess of former times. The necessary
qualifications of such a person are that she should have sturdy legs,
and such knowledge of some foreign language as will enable her during
their walks to converse in it with her pupil. Fraulein Schult, who
came from one of the German cantons of Switzerland, was an ideal
'promeneuse'. She never was tired and she was well-informed. The number
of things that could be learned from her during a walk was absolutely
incredible.

Madame de Nailles, therefore, after a time, gave up to her, not without
apparent regret, the duty of accompanying Jacqueline, while she herself
fulfilled those duties to society which the most devoted of mothers can
not wholly avoid; but the stepmother and stepdaughter were always to be
seen together at mass at one o'clock; together they attended the Cours
(that system of classes now so much in vogue) and also the weekly
instruction given in the catechism; and if Madame de Nailles, when, at
night, she told her husband all she had been doing for Jacqueline during
the day (she never made any merit of her zeal for the child's welfare),
added: "I left Jacqueline in this place or in that, where Mademoiselle
Schult was to call for her," M. de Nailles showed no disposition to ask
questions, for he well understood that his wife felt a certain delicacy
in telling him that she had been to pay a brief visit to her own
relatives, who, she knew, were distasteful to him. He had, indeed, very
soon discerned in them a love of intrigue, a desire to get the most they
could out of him, and a disagreeable propensity to parasitism. With the
consummate tact she showed in everything she did, Madame de Nailles kept
her own family in the background, though she never neglected them. She
was always doing them little services, but she knew well that there
were certain things about them that could not but be disagreeable to
her husband. M. de Nailles knew all this, too, and respected his wife's
affection for her family. He seldom asked her where she had been during
the day. If he had she would have answered, with a sigh: "I w