"Don't try to take me in like that, Jean, my dear; I know you too well, you see. You are different, I tell you! You have gradually got very abrupt, restless, and absent-minded. Listen, now,--would you like me to tell you what it is?"
Seated at some distance away from them, Madame de Nézel was watching them, with an expression of melancholy resignation.
Bijou glanced across at her, and the young girl's violet eyes gleamed between her long, thick lashes, as she said:
"You are in love with someone who does not return your love."
"You don't know what you are talking about," he answered.
"Well, then, why have you gone so red? Oh, how proud you are. You are vexed because I have found this out." And then, after a short silence, she began again: "Have you told her?"
"Have I told what? and whom? My dear Bijou, how foolish you are."
"Have you told Mad--" She stopped abruptly, and then, with her face turned towards Madame de Nézel, she continued: "The person with whom you are in love, have you told her that you love her?"
"No!" he murmured, in a stifled sort of voice.
"You are afraid to? but why? I constantly hear grandmamma, Bertrade, Paul, and Uncle Alexis, saying over and over again that you are the kind of man women like; _she_ would be sure to like you, too, and she would marry you, I am certain." She leaned towards him, nearly touching his ear as she whispered to him, and not caring what effect her familiarity might have. "Listen, now, if you like I will tell her for you, and I am quite sure what her answer will be."
Jean rose abruptly, and seizing Bijou's hand, he asked excitedly:
"I am just saying that she _will_ love you, if she does not already."
"But of whom are you speaking--of whom?" he stammered out, aghast.
She answered him in a hesitating way, with a frank look on her pretty face, but she spoke in such a low voice that he could scarcely catch her first words.
"Bijou!" called out Pierrot, separating them unceremoniously, "grandmamma says you are forgetting about the tea." And then, looking at their faces, he went on: "Well, I never! you are both as red as cherries; there's no mistake about it, it's baking hot in here."
Denyse hurried away, and Pierrot continued:
"We thought over there that you were quarrelling."