"Oh, to be like Ninon de l'Enclos," said she; "always lovely!"
"Always?"
"Yes, dear aunt."
"Do you know the true, the terrible story of the reckless woman you speak of?" asked the countess, gravely.
"No; does it convey a moral?"
"A most severe one; shall I tell it you?"
"If you please, dear aunt, and if it is not too dreadful," replied Jacqueline, as she ran her slender white fingers through the masses of dark hair that overhung her shoulders.
Then without further preamble, the garrulous old countess commenced the following narrative, which, to say truth, I thought a very strange one; but the subject of it was the bosom-friend of Madame de Maintenon, of the Marquise de Sévigné, and moved in the best society of the very singular Paris of her day.