Part 9 (2/2)
”Here? oh! nothing, of course; but this year I am to leave the convent--and I think I can guess what will then be before me.”
Here, seeing that the nun who was keeping guard was listening, Giselle, with great presence of mind, spoke louder on indifferent subjects till she had pa.s.sed out of earshot, then she rapidly poured her secret into Jacqueline's ear.
From a few words that had pa.s.sed between her grandmother and Madame d'Argy, she had found out that Madame de Monredon intended to marry her.
”But that need not make you unhappy,” said Jacqueline, ”unless he is really distasteful to you.”
”That is what I am not sure about--perhaps he is not the one I think.
But I hardly know why--I have a dread, a great dread, that it is one of our neighbors in the country. Grandmamma has several times spoken in my presence of the advantage of uniting our two estates--they touch each other--oh! I know her ideas! she wants a man well-born, one who has a position in the world--some one, as she says, who knows something of life--that is, I suppose, some one no longer young, and who has not much hair on his head--like Monsieur de Talbrun.”
”Is he very ugly--this Monsieur de Talbrun?”
”He's not ugly--and not handsome. But, just think! he is thirty-four!”
Jacqueline blushed, seeing in this speech a reflection on her own taste in such matters.
”That's twice my age,” sighed Giselle.
”Of course that would be dreadful if he were to stay always twice your age--for instance, if you were now thirty-five, he would be seventy, and a hundred and twenty when you reached your sixtieth year--but really to be twice your age now will only make him seventeen years older than yourself.”
In the midst of this chatter, which was beginning to attract the notice of the nun, they broke off with a laugh, but it was only one of those laughs 'au bout des levres', uttered by persons who have made up their minds to be unhappy. Then Giselle went on:
”I know nothing about him, you understand--but he frightens me. I tremble to think of taking his arm, of talking to him, of being his wife. Just think even of saying thou to him!”
”But married people don't say thou to each other nowadays,” said Jacqueline, ”it is considered vulgar.”
”But I shall have to call him by his Christian name!”
”What is Monsieur de Talbrun's Christian name?”
”Oscar.”
”Humph! That is not a very pretty name, but you could get over the difficulty--you could say 'mon ami'. After all, your sorrows are less than mine.”
”Poor Jacqueline!” said Giselle, her soft hazel eyes moist with sympathy.
”I have lost at one blow all my illusions, and I have made a horrible discovery, that it would be wicked to tell to any one--you understand--not even to my confessor.”
”Heavens! but you could tell your mother!”
”You forget, I have no mother,” replied Jacqueline in a tone which frightened her friend: ”I had a dear mamma once, but she would enter less than any one into my sorrows; and as to my father--it would make things worse to speak to him,” she added, clasping her hands. ”Have you ever read any novels, Giselle?”
”Hem!” said the discreet voice of the nun, by way of warning.
”Two or three by Walter Scott.”
”Oh! then you can imagine nothing like what I could tell you. How horrid that nun is, she stops always as she comes near us! Why can't she do as Modeste does, and leave us to talk by ourselves?”
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