Part 57 (1/2)
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?”