May the moan of the wind, the green rushes’ soft sighing, The fragrance that floats in the air you have moved, May all heard, may all breathed, may all seen, seem but trying To say: They have loved. Then she added, after a pause: “Isn’t that beautiful?” “How dares she say such words?” thought Giselle, whose sense of propriety was outraged by this allusion to love. Fred, too, looked askance and was not comfortable, for he thought that Jacqueline had too much assurance for her age, but that, after all, she was becoming more and more charming. At that moment Belle and Yvonne were summoned, and they departed, full of an intention to spread everywhere the news that Giselle, the little goose, had actually known that Le Lac had been written by Lamartine. The Benedictine Sisters positively had acquired that much knowledge. These girls were not the only persons that day at the reception who indulged in a little ill-natured talk after going away. Mesdames d’Argy and de Monredon, on their way to the Faubourg St. Germain, criticised Madame de Nailles pretty freely. As they crossed the Parc Monceau to reach their carriage, which was waiting for them on the Boulevard Malesherbes, they made the young people, Giselle and Fred, walk ahead, that they might have an opportunity of expressing themselves freely, the old dowager especially, whose toothless mouth never lost an opportunity of smirching the character and the reputation of her neighbors. “When I think of the pains my poor cousin de Nailles took to impress upon us all that he was making what is called a ‘mariage raisonnable’! Well, if a man wants a wife who is going to set up her own notions, her own customs, he had better marry a poor girl without fortune! This one will simply ruin him. My dear, I am continually amazed at the way people are living whose incomes I know to the last sou. What an example for Jacqueline! Extravagance, fast living, elegant self-indulgence.... Did you observe the Baronne’s gown?--of rough woolen stuff. She told some one it was the last creation of Doucet, and you know what that implies! His serge costs more than one of our velvet gowns.... And then her artistic tastes, her bric-a brac! Her salon looks like a museum or a bazaar. I grant you it makes a very pretty setting for her and all her coquetries. But in my time respectable women were contented with furniture covered with red or yellow silk damask furnished by their upholsterers. They didn’t go about trying to hunt up the impossible. ‘On ne cherche pas midi a quatorze heures’. You hold, as I do, to the old fashions, though you are not nearly so old, my dear Elise, and Jacqueline’s mother thought as we think. She would say that her daughter is being very badly brought up. To be sure, all young creatures nowadays are the same. Parents, on a plea of tenderness, keep them at home, where they get spoiled among grown people, when they had much better have the