"Now, I am going to arrange my vases," remarked Bijou, when she had adorned everyone with flowers.
"Where?" asked M. de Rueille.
"Why, in the dining-room, in the drawing-room, in the hall, here, everywhere."
"We will come and help you!" exclaimed several voices.
"Oh, no!—instead of helping me you would just hinder me."
She picked up her basket and went away, looking very merry and fresh. Her muslin dress fluttered round her, as pink and pretty as she herself was. As soon as she had disappeared, it seemed as though a veil of melancholy had suddenly spread itself over the large room. No one spoke, and there was not a sound to be heard except the knocking together of the billiard-balls, and the rattling of the numbers, which the abbé kept shaking all the time, bringing into this game, as into everything else, the methodical precision which was habitual to him.
"Grandmamma," said Henry de Bracieux at length, "you ought not to allow Bijou to give us the slip like this, especially at Bracieux. In Paris it is not so bad, but here, when she leaves us we are done for; she is the ray of sunshine that lights up the whole house."
The marchioness shrugged her shoulders.
"You talk nonsense; you forget that very soon Bijou will give us the slip, as you so elegantly put it, in a more decisive way."
"What do you mean? She is not going to be married?"