"Really? Well, you were the only one who did not, then! You went on to such a degree that I wondered if it were not simply for the sake of tormenting me that you were acting in that way!"
Bijou gazed straight at M. de Rueille with her beautiful, luminous eyes.
"To torment you? and how could it torment you if I chose to be agreeable to M. de Bernès?"
"How?" stuttered M. de Rueille, very much confused; "why, I have just told you I am not--we are not accustomed to seeing you make a fuss like that, especially of a young man! No, I assure you, I was amazed. I am still, in fact."
"And I am ever so sorry to have vexed you," she said sweetly. "Yes, I am really; you see, I had never noticed M. de Bernès particularly, and I wanted to see whether all the nice things M. de Clagny had told me about him were quite true, and so I was studying him. Will you forgive me?"
M. de Rueille did not reply to this, as he had another grievance on his mind.
"With Clagny, too, you have a way of carrying on, which is not at all the thing. He is an old man; that's all well and good; but, you know, he is not so ancient yet for you to be able to take such liberties with him!"
"Well, sometimes you appear to admire him, to be in ecstasies about him; and then sometimes you coax and wheedle him in the most absurd way, as you did yesterday."
"Yesterday! I coaxed and wheedled M. de Clagny? I?"
"When you would insist, in spite of everything, in driving through Rue Rabelais; and I'll be hanged if I can see why you wanted to; it's about as dirty a street as there is, without taking into account that you might have caused us all to break our necks. Yes, certainly, it was the most dangerous experiment--your fad! Young Bernès, who is one of the most out-and-out daring fellows himself, tried to persuade you out of wanting to go along that street!"
The strange little gleam, which sometimes lighted up Bijou's eyes, came into them now.
"Yes, that's true!" she said, smiling. "He was wild to prevent our going down the Rue Rabelais--M. de Bernès! It was as though he was afraid of something!"
"He was afraid of coming to smash, by Jove, just as I was, and the abbé, and even Pierrot. I cannot understand how old Clagny could have let you have your fad out, for he was responsible for the little Dubuisson girl, and for Pierrot, and you, without reckoning all of us!"