The marchioness decided not to speak to Bijou about M. de Clagny that evening, as she did not want to disturb the young girl's rest.

The following morning, however, she sent for her, and Bijou arrived, gay and lively as usual. She gave a little pout of disappointment when her grandmother informed her that she wished to speak to her about something very serious.

"It concerns one of my greatest friends," began Madame de Bracieux, "and he is also a friend of yours."

"M. de Clagny?" interrupted Bijou.

"Yes, M. de Clagny. You must have seen that he is very fond of you, haven't you?"

"I am very fond of him, too, very fond of him."

"Exactly, but you care for him as though he were your father, or a delightful old uncle, whilst he does not care for you either as though you were his daughter, or niece; in short, you will be very much astonished—"

"Astonished at what?" asked Bijou timidly.

"At—well, he wants to marry you, that's the long and short of it."

"He, too?" murmured the young girl, looking bewildered.

"What do you mean by 'he, too'?" exclaimed the marchioness, bewildered in her turn; "who else wants to marry you that you say 'he, too '?"

Denyse blushed crimson.

"I ought to have told you all that before, grandmamma," she said, sitting down on a little stool at Madame de Bracieux's feet; "but we have been so dissipated just lately, what with the paper-chase, the theatre, the races, and the dances, that I don't seem to have had a minute, and then, too, it was not very interesting either."

"Ah! that's your opinion, is it?"

"Well, considering that I don't want to marry either of them."

"Well, but who is it, child, who is it?" asked the marchioness.

"Why, just Henry and Jean. Jean spoke to me first for Henry, who, it seems, had got him to ask me whether I would allow him to ask your permission to marry me. I answered that he ought to have asked you first and not me—"

"You are a real little Bijou, my darling."

"But that it really did not matter, as I did not want to marry him."

"He is not rich enough for you, my dear."

"Oh, I don't know anything about that. And then, too, all that is quite the same to me, but I should not like Henry for a husband. I know him too well."

"Ah! and what about Jean?"

"Jean, too, I should not like as a husband. That is just what I told him, when, after I had refused Henry, he began again on his own account."

"They go ahead—my grandchildren. Now I can understand how it is that, for the last few days, they have had faces as long as fiddles."

There was a short silence, and then Madame de Bracieux remarked, as though in conclusion:

"I know then, now, what your answer is to my poor old friend Clagny."

"How do you know, though?"

"Because if you will not have either of your cousins, who are, both of them, in their different ways, very taking, it is scarcely probable that you would accept an old friend of your grandmother's."

"But he, too, is very taking!"

"Yes, that's true; but he is sixty years old!"

"He does not look it!"

"He is though."

"I know; but that does not make any difference to the fact that I should not mind marrying him any more than I should Jean or Henry."

"You do not know what marriage is; you do not understand."

Bijou half closed her beautiful, bright eyes.

"Yes," she said, speaking slowly, "I do understand quite well, grandmamma."

"Well, all this is no answer for me to give to M. de Clagny."

"Is he coming to-day?"

"He is coming directly."

Bijou moved uneasily on her footstool, and then, after a moment's consideration, she said:

"You can tell him, grandmamma, that I am very much touched, and very much flattered that he should have thought of me, but that I do not want to marry yet—" And then, laying her head on the marchioness's lap, she added: "because I am too happy here with you."

"My little Bijou! my darling Bijou!" murmured Madame de Bracieux, stooping to kiss the pretty face lifted towards her, "you know what a comfort you are to me; but, all the same, you cannot stay for ever with your old grandmother. I am not saying that, though, in order to persuade you into a marriage that would be perfect folly."

Denyse looked up at the marchioness, as she asked:

"Folly? But why folly?"

"Because M. de Clagny is thirty-eight years older than you are, and he will be quite infirm just when you are in your prime; and such marriages have certain inconveniences which—well—which you would be the first to find out."

Bijou had risen from her low seat on hearing the sound of carriage-wheels, which drew up in front of the hall-door. She looked through the window, and then ran away, saying:

"Here he is, grandmamma!"

---

During luncheon, Madame de Bracieux announced, in a careless, indifferent way:

"M. de Clagny is leaving here; he came to say good-bye to me this morning."

Bijou looked up, and Jean de Blaye remarked:

"He is leaving here? Why, it seemed as though he had taken root in this part of the world."

"Oh," put in M. de Rueille, "old Clagny's roots are never very deep."

Bijou turned towards the marchioness.

"When is he leaving, grandmamma?" she asked anxiously.

"Why, at once; to-morrow, I think. Anyhow, we shall see him to-night at Tourville; he is going to the ball in order to see everyone to whom he wants to say good-bye."

"And he is not going to the races?"

"No, he is busy packing."

"And our play to-morrow!" exclaimed Denyse, in consternation. "He had promised me over and over again to come to it."

The marchioness glanced at her grand-daughter, and said to herself that, decidedly, even with the kindest heart in the world, youth knows no pity.

---

Bijou's arrival at the Tourville ball was a veritable triumph. In her pink crÊpe dress, which matched her complexion admirably, she looked wonderfully pretty, and different from anyone else.

"Just look at the Dubuisson girl," said Louis de la Balue to M. de Juzencourt. "She has tried to get herself up like Mademoiselle de Courtaix. She has copied her dress exactly, and just see what she looks like. She might pass for her maid, and that's the most she could do. How is it, now?"

M. de Juzencourt laughed gruffly.

"Why, it's just that if the outside is the same, what's inside it isn't the same. Isn't she going to be married?"

"Yes, she's going to marry a young Huguenot, who must be somewhere about, hiding in some corner or another. Ah! No! he isn't in a corner either. There he is, like all the others, fluttering round 'The Bijou.'"

"And you? You don't flutter round her?" asked M. de Juzencourt.

"I? I'd marry her—because, sooner or later, one's got to get married, or one's parents make a fuss, because of keeping up the name, you know—but as to fluttering round—By Jove, no! that isn't in my line!" and then, in a languid way, he went off to Henry de Bracieux.

"How hot it is," he began, glancing at him dreamily, and speaking in a low voice, with an affected drawl. "You are lucky not to turn red. You've got such a complexion, though, that's true. You look like a regular Hercules, and yet, with that, your complexion is as delicate—"

As he was leaning towards him, and looking sentimental, Henry exclaimed impatiently, in his full, sonorous voice:

"Oh! hang my complexion!" and turning away, he left young La Balue planted there in the middle of the drawing-room, and went off himself to Jean de Blaye, who, with a melancholy expression on his face, was standing at some distance off, watching Bijou through the intricacies of a dance, for which six partners had all tried to claim her.

When M. de Clagny approached Denyse, and bowed to her ceremoniously, she said at once, without even returning his bow:

"Grandmamma has told me that you are going away. I am sure that it is because of me?"

He nodded assent, and she put her little hand through his arm, and moved in the direction of another room, which was almost empty.

"Please," she began, in a beseeching tone, "please, do not go away."

"And I, in my turn," he answered, deeply moved, "must say, please, Bijou, do not ask what is impossible. I have not been able to be with you without getting as foolish as all the others. I have let myself go on dreaming, just as fools dream, and now that all is over, I must try to become wise again, and to forget my dream, and in order to do that I must go away, very far away, too."

"You thought that—that I should say yes?" she asked.

"Well, you were so good to me, so sweet and confiding always, that I did hope—yes, God help me—I did hope—that perhaps you would let me go on loving you."

"And so it was my fault that you hoped that?" she said dreamily.

"It wasn't your fault—it was mine; one always does hope what one wants."

"Yes, I am sure that I ought not to have behaved as I did with you." And her eyes filled with tears as she murmured, almost humbly: "I am so sorry! will you forgive me?"

"Bijou!" exclaimed M. de Clagny, almost beside himself. "My dear Bijou, it is I who ought to ask your forgiveness for causing you a moment's sadness."

"Well, then, be kind—don't go away! not to-morrow, at any rate! Promise me that you will come to Bracieux to-morrow to see us act our play! Oh, don't say no! And then, afterwards, I will talk to you—better than I could this evening." And gazing up at him with her soft, luminous eyes, she added: "You won't regret coming, I am sure."

Jean de Blaye was just passing by at that moment, and Bijou stopped him, and said, in a coaxing way:

"Won't you ask me for a waltz? do, please, you waltz so well."

And laying her hand on his shoulder, she disappeared, just as Pierrot arrived to claim his dance.

"Leave your cousin in peace," said M. de Jonzac, who was seated on a divan watching the dancing. "You are much too young to ask girls to dance with you—I mean girls like Bijou."

"Ah, how old must I be then before I can ask them—not as old as you, I suppose?"

"You certainly have a nice way of saying things."

"I say, father, why do Jean and Henry say that young La Balue gets to be worse and worse form?"

"Young La Balue? Oh, I don't know."

"They say that he makes himself up."

"That's true."

"And that he gets to be worse and worse form! How?"

"If you want to know how, you have only to ask your cousins: they will tell you."

"They won't, though! I asked them, and Jean just said, 'Don't come bothering here.' Are we going home soon?"

"Going home? why, your cousin is sure to stay for the cotillion."

"I was very stupid to come here instead of staying with M. Giraud and the abbÉ."

"Ah, by the bye, why didn't he come—M. Giraud? Bijou asked for an invitation for him."

"Yes, but he wouldn't come: he is awfully down in the dumps, and has been for some time. He doesn't eat, and he doesn't sleep either; instead of going to bed, he goes off walking by the river all night."

"And you don't know what's the matter with him?"

"The matter with him! I think it is Bijou that is the matter with him."

"What do you mean? Bijou the matter with him?"

"Why, yes, it's the same with Jean, and Henry, and Paul. You can see very well, father, that they are all running after her, can't you? not to speak of old Clagny, who isn't worth counting now." He stopped a minute, and then finished off, in a sorrowful way: "and not to speak of me either, for I don't count yet."

"Oh! you exaggerate all that," said M. de Jonzac, quite convinced that his son was in the right, but not wanting to own it. "Bijou is certainly very pretty, and it is not surprising that—"

Pierrot interrupted his father eagerly.

"Oh! it isn't that she is just pretty only, but she is good, and clever, and jolly, and everything. They are quite right to fall in love with her, and, if I were only twenty-five—"

"If you were twenty-five, my dear young man, she would send you about your business, as she does the others."

"That's very possible," replied Pierrot philosophically, but at the same time sadly; and then, pointing to Bijou, who was just standing talking to Jeanne Dubuisson in the middle of the room, he said: "Isn't she pretty, though, father? Just look at her; she is dressed absolutely like Jeanne, their dresses are just alike, stitch for stitch, as old MÈre Rafut says. I'm sure that, if they mixed them up when they were not in them themselves, there'd be no telling which was which after; and yet like that on them, I mean, they don't look alike at all! Do you think I might venture to ask her for a dance, father—Jeanne Dubuisson?"

"Oh, yes; she is good-hearted enough to give you one!"

A minute or two later and Jeanne went off with Pierrot for the next dance. M. Spiegel crossed over to Bijou, and asked her for the waltz which was just commencing, but she shook her head, saying:

"I am so tired, if you only knew!"

"Only just a little turn, won't you?" he begged. "Ever since the beginning of the evening I have not been able to get a single waltz with you."

"Oh, no; please don't ask me! I do want to rest; I—" and then, suddenly making up her mind to speak out, she said, "Well, then, no; it isn't that—I know I am not clever at telling untruths—I am not at all tired, but I don't want to waltz with you, because—"

"Because?"

"Because I am afraid of hurting Jeanne's feelings—"

"Hurting Jeanne's feelings! But how?" he asked, in surprise.

"Well, it sounds very vain what I am going to say, but I must tell you all the same. Why, I think that Jeanne worships you to such a degree that she is jealous of everyone who approaches you, or who speaks to you, or who looks at you even!"

M. Spiegel looked displeased; he knitted his brows, and his placid-looking face suddenly took a hard expression.

"She has told you so?"

Bijou answered with the eagerness and embarrassment of anyone feeling compelled to tell an untruth.

"Oh, no—no, I have just imagined it myself; you know I am so fond of Jeanne! I know all that passes in her mind, and I should be so wretched if I caused her any unhappiness—or even the slightest anxiety; do you understand what I mean?"

"I understand that you are just an angel of goodness, mademoiselle, and that it is no wonder they are all so fond of you!"

Bijou was looking down on the floor, her breath coming and going quickly, a faint flush had come into her cheeks, and her nostrils were quivering, as she listened silently to the young professor's words.

He put his arm round her waist, took her little hand in his, as she offered no resistance, and whirled her off into the midst of the dance. M. Spiegel waltzed divinely, and Bijou was passionately fond of the waltz À trois temps. With a flush on her cheeks, her eyes half-closed, and her lips parted, showing her dazzling white teeth, she went on whirling round as long as the orchestra played. Several times she passed quite close to Jeanne, without even seeing her poor friend, who was being jerked about by Pierrot. The youth kept treading on his partner's toes, or knocking her against the furniture; and when, now and again, Jeanne would stop to get breath, Pierrot would chatter away most eloquently about all kinds of sports, of which she was absolutely ignorant.

"You know," he said, putting out his enormous foot and his formidable knee, "I am a very second-rate dancer, but I'm very good at football. Our team is going to play a match this winter against the Pont-sur-Loire team; you ought to see it; it will be first-class! I keep goal; you should just see what jolly kicks—"

He broke off as Jeanne did not speak. She was looking uneasily at her fiancÉ as he passed and re-passed, apparently happy in guiding Bijou along through the rapid whirl of the dance.

"I am boring you," said Pierrot; "shall we go on now?"

"No," she replied, in a changed voice; "I do not feel quite myself, and it is so warm! Will you take me across to papa—he is playing cards over there. I should like to go home!"

Whilst they were on their way to M. Dubuisson, Bijou stopped M. Spiegel just near the orchestra; and said, in a laughing voice:

"Why, you are indefatigable—one must get one's breath, though; besides, the waltz is just finishing now!"

She glanced at the four wretched musicians, who were in a deplorable state, with their shiny-looking coats, their limp shirt-fronts, and their faces bathed in perspiration.

"Why, Monsieur Sylvestre!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Good evening, Monsieur Sylvestre! Well, I never! I didn't expect to see you!"

The poor fellow looked up eagerly, and, gazing at Bijou, with his soft, blue eyes full of deep distress, he stammered out:

"I did not expect to be seen either, mademoiselle!"

---