devoted, loyal as she was, Marcélite was not a mother—not her mother. She had stopped at the boundary where the mother ceases to be a physical and becomes a psychical necessity. The child still clung to Marcélite, but the young woman was motherless. She had an uncle, however, who might become a father.
"Là!" Marcélite had exhausted her last devisable subterfuge, and made known her readiness to begin the show.
"Là! mon bébé! là, ma mignonne! what do you think of that?" She turned it around by the belt; it seemed all covered over with bubbles of muslin and frostings of lace.
"Just look at that! Ah ha! I thought you would be astonished! You see that lace? Ça c'est du vrai, no doubt about that,—real Valenciennes. You think I don't know real lace, hein? and mousseline des Indes? You ask Madame Treize—you know what she said? 'Well, Marcélite, that is the prettiest pattern of lace and the finest piece of muslin I almost ever saw.' Madame Treize told me that herself; and it's true, for I know it myself."
