Bijou, who looked about fifteen or sixteen years of age, had attained her majority just a week ago, but from her perfect and dainty little person there seemed to emanate a breath of child-like candour and innocence. Her charm, however, which was most subtle and penetrating, was distinctly that of a woman, and it was this contrast which made Bijou so fascinating and so unlike other girls. Such as she was, she infatuated men, delighted women, and was adored by all.
As soon as she entered the room, all rosy-looking in her pink dress of cloudy muslin, with a sort of flat basket filled with roses, fastened round her neck with pink ribbon, everyone surrounded her, glad to welcome the gaiety which seemed to enter with her, for until her arrival the large room had felt somewhat bare and empty.
Paul de Rueille, who was playing billiards with his brother-in-law, Henry de Bracieux, came to ask for a rose from her basket, whilst Henry, who had followed him, took one without asking.
The de Rueille children, leaving the abbé, who continued calling out the loto numbers in a monotonous tone, went sliding across to the young girl, and hung about her. Their mother called them back.
"Leave Bijou alone, children; you worry her!"
"Robert! Marcel! come here," said the abbé, getting up.
"Oh, no," protested Bijou, "let them alone; I like to have them!"
She took the basket from her neck, and was just about to put it down on the billiard-table, when she suddenly stopped.
"Isn't she nice? she thinks of everything," murmured Henry de Bracieux, quite touched.
"Come and kiss me, Bijou," said the marchioness.
Denyse had just put her basket down on a divan. She took from it a full-blown rose, and went quickly across to her grandmother, whom she kissed over and over again in a fondling way as a child.
"There," she said, presenting her rose, "it is the most beautiful one of all!" Her voice was rather high-pitched, rather "a head-voice" perhaps, but it sounded so young and clear, and then, too, she spoke so distinctly, and with such an admirable pronunciation.
"You have not seen Pierrot, then?" asked the marchioness.
"Pierrot?" said Bijou, as though she were trying to recall something to her memory. "Why, yes, I have seen him; he was with me a minute or two helping me to gather the flowers, and then he went away to his father, who was shooting rabbits in the wood."