"As you will," said Giselle, sadly, "but you will give great pain to a good man whose heart is wholly yours."
"I did not ask for his heart. Such gifts are exasperating. One does not know what to do with them. Can't he—poor Fred—love me as I love him, and leave me my liberty?"
"Your liberty!" exclaimed Giselle; "liberty to ruin your life, that's what it will be."
"Really, one would suppose there was only one kind of existence in your eyes—this life of your own, Giselle. To leave one cage to be shut up in another—that is the fate of many birds, I know, but there are others who like to use their wings to soar into the air. I like that expression. Come, little mother, tell me right out, plainly, that your lot is the only one in this world that ought to be envied by a woman."
Giselle answered with a strange smile:
"You seem astonished that I adore my baby; but since he came great things seem to have been revealed to me. When I hold him to my breast I seem to understand, as I never did before, duty and marriage, family ties and sorrows, life itself, in short, its griefs and joys. You can not understand that now, but you will some day. You, too, will gaze upon the horizon as I do. I am ready to suffer; I am ready for self-sacrifice. I know now whither my life leads me. I am led, as it were, by this little being, who seemed to me at first only a doll, for whom I was embroidering caps and dresses. You ask whether I am satisfied with my lot in life. Yes, I am, thanks to this guide, this guardian angel, thanks to my precious Enguerrand."
Jacqueline listened, stupefied, to this unexpected outburst, so unlike her cousin's usual language; but the charm was broken by its ending with the tremendously long name of Enguerrand, which always made her laugh, it was in such perfect harmony with the feudal pretensions of the Monredons and the Talbruns.
"How solemn and eloquent and obscure you are, my dear," she answered. "You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow your example?"
"Fred is not Monsieur de Talbrun," said the young wife, for the moment forgetting herself.
"Do you mean to say—"