“One would not suppose so, to judge by the picture with which she has inspired you. You may say what you like, but I know that in all this there was a set purpose to insult me.”
“Clotilde!”
“In the first place, on no pretext ought you to have been induced to paint her portrait.”
“Do you think so? Consider, had I refused, the danger of awakening suspicion? I accepted the commission most unwillingly, much put out by it, as you may suppose. But you are making too much of an imaginary fault. Consign the wretched picture to the barn, if you like. We will never say another word about so foolish a matter. You promise me to forget it, won’t you?... Dear! you will promise me?” he added, after a pause.
Madame de Nailles sighed and replied: “If not she it will be some one else. I am very unhappy.... I am weak and contemptible....”
“Clotilde!” replied Marien, in an accent that went to Jacqueline’s heart like a knife.
She fancied that after this she heard the sound of a kiss, and, with her cheeks aflame and her head burning, she rushed away. She understood little of what she had overheard. She only realized that he had given her up, that he had turned her into ridicule, that he had said “Clotilde!” to her mother, that he had called her dear—she!—the woman she had so adored, so venerated, her best friend, her father’s wife, her mother by adoption! Everything in this world seemed to be giving way under her feet. The world was full of falsehood and of treason, and life, so bad, so cruel, was no longer what she had supposed it to be. It had broken its promise to herself, it had made her bad—bad forever. She loved no one, she believed in no one. She wished she were dead.
How she reached her own room in this state Jacqueline never knew. She was aware at last of being on her knees beside her bed, with her face hidden in the bed-clothes. She was biting them to stifle her desire to scream. Her hands were clenched convulsively.
“Mamma!” she cried, “mamma!”
Was this a reproach addressed to her she had so long called by that name? Or was it an appeal, vibrating with remorse, to her real mother, so long forgotten in favor of this false idol, her rival, her enemy?