Jean came up just at this moment, with Henry de Bracieux and Pierrot.

"Accept my compliments," said M. de Rueille drily, turning towards him; "you certainly know how to design costumes for pretty girls; but, if I were you, I would have been rather more careful."

"Why, what's up with you?" asked Jean, without even looking at Bijou; "the costume's right enough!"

"Besides," remarked Bijou tranquilly, "there are only three persons who have any right to trouble themselves about my costumes--grandmamma, I myself, or my husband."

"Yes, if you had one!"

"Certainly; well, I shall be having one!"

Jean de Blaye shrugged his shoulders incredulously, and Bijou continued:

"I a.s.sure you it is quite true! I am going to be married."

"To whom?" asked M. de Rueille uneasily.

"Oh, yes, what a good joke!" remarked Pierrot.

"Whom are you going to marry?" asked Henry de Bracieux. "Tell us!"

M. de Clagny had just entered the room, and putting her arm through his, she said, in a mischievous way, to the others:

"I am going to tell M. de Clagny." And then, turning to him, she added: "Let us go out-doors, though; it is stifling in here!"

"Isn't she aesthetic this evening?" murmured Pierrot, gazing at Bijou's long Grecian cloak of pale pink. "I should think M. Giraud would think her perfect to-night; he's always saying she isn't made for modern costumes."

"Ah, by the bye, where is he--Giraud?" asked Jean de Blaye; "he disappeared after dinner, and we have not seen him again!"

Pierrot explained that he must have gone off for a stroll along the river, as he did nearly every evening. He was getting more and more odd, and had fits of gaiety and melancholy, turn by turn. That very morning he had left the schoolroom in order to go to Madame de Bracieux, who had sent to ask him to translate an English letter for her; and then he had come back some time after, saying that he had not ventured to knock, because he could hear that the marchioness was talking to Mademoiselle Denyse, and ever since then he had not uttered another word.

"Where the devil's he gone?" asked Jean; and Pierrot, speaking through his nose, began to imitate the street vendors on the boulevards.

"Where is Bulgaria? Find Bulgaria!"

When she was alone with M. de Clagny under the big trees, Bijou said, in the sweetest way:

"I came back home this morning, quite wretched at having caused you any sorrow. It seemed to me that I must have been too affectionate in my manner towards you--too free--and that I had made you think something quite different. Is that so?"

"Yes, that is just it--and so you have no affection at all for me?"

"You know very well that I have!"

"I mean that you like me just as though I were some old relative or another."

"More than that!"

"Well, but you do not love me enough to--to--love me as a husband?"

"I do not know at all. I cannot understand myself just what I feel for you. In the first place, I think you are very nice-looking, and very charming, too; and then, when you are here, I feel as though I am surrounded with care and affection. It seems to me that I breathe more freely, that I am gayer and happier, and I have never, never felt like that before--"

Very much touched by what she was saying, and very anxious, too, about what she was going to say, the count pressed Bijou's arm against his without answering.

"Well, then," she continued, "I thought that, as I liked you better than I have ever yet liked anyone, and that, on the other hand, I should never be able to console myself for having caused you so much sorrow, the best thing would be to marry you."

M. de Clagny stopped short, and asked, in a choked voice:

"Then you consent?"

"Yes."

"My darling!" he stammered out, "my darling!"

"I told grandmamma this morning," continued Bijou, "and I must confess that she was not delighted. She did all she could to make me change my mind."

"I can quite understand that."

"She thinks that it is mad, for you as well as for me, to marry when there is such disproportion of age; and then, she did not say so, but I could see that there was something troubling her, which troubles me too, though to a much less degree."

"And it is?"

"The disproportion in money matters. Yes--it appears that you are horribly rich. Grandmamma said so yesterday, when she told me that you had asked for my hand."

"What can it matter, Bijou, dear, whether I am a little more or less rich?"

"It matters a great deal, with grandmamma's ideas about things especially. Oh, it is not that she thinks it humiliating for me to be married without anything, for I have nothing, you know, in comparison with what you have! No, she looks upon marriage as a partnership, or exchange of what one has. '_Give me what you've got, and I'll give you what I've got_,' as the country people here say. Well, you have your name, which is a good one, and your money, which makes you a very rich man; on my side, I have my name, which is rather a good one, too, and my youth, which certainly counts for something."

"Very well, then, and how can the disproportion of what we have make your grandmamma uneasy?"

"Well, it's like this, you know--grandmamma is very fond of me, and she thinks that, as I am thirty-eight years younger than you, you might die before me, and that, after living for years in very great luxury, after letting myself get accustomed to every comfort, which, up to the present, I have not had, I might suddenly find myself very poor and very wretched at an age when it would be too late to begin life over again, and so I should suffer very much on account of the bad habits I had contracted, and which I should not be able to drop--"

"You know very well, my adored Bijou, that everything I possess is and will be yours. My will is already made, in which I leave everything to you, even if you do not become my wife."

"Yes, but she always says a will could be torn up."

"If your grandmamma would prefer it, I could make it over to you in a marriage settlement."

Bijou laughed.

"Ah! she would imagine, then, that we might be divorced, and a divorce does away with all things--"

"But, supposing I make out in the marriage contract that the half of what I possess now is really yours, and supposing I made over the rest to you, only reserving to myself the interest?"

Bijou shook her head, and then, with a pretty movement of playful affection, she threw her soft arms round M. de Clagny's neck, and said:

"I don't want you to give me anything but happiness, and I am sure you will give me plenty of that. I hope you will live a very, very long time, and it would not matter to me, when I am old, if I were to find myself poor again, comparatively speaking."