"Oh, no! oh, no!" he murmured, as though he were in some dream.
"I'm sure we shall be late for dinner," said Bijou; "and you know grandmamma does not altogether like that."
Rueille touched the pony's back with the whip, and the animal, springing forward, jerked the little carriage violently, and then started off at a mad pace.
This time Bijou looked stupefied.
"What's that for?" she asked. "Whatever is the matter with you to-day? Just now you almost upset us, and now you touch Colonel with the whip, and you ought not to let him even guess that you have one; you have made him take fright," and then, seeing that the horse was calming down, she added, "or nearly so; you are not yourself at all."
"No," he answered mechanically, "I am not myself."
At the pony's first plunge Denyse had taken M. de Rueille's arm again. It was not that she was in the least afraid, but she was perched on a seat which was too high for her, so that she could not keep her balance, and, consequently, she tried to hold on to something firm. Without loosing the arm on to which she was hanging, she leant towards her cousin, and asked, with evident interest:
"Not yourself? What is the matter? Are you ill?"
"Ill? No! at least, not exactly."
"What do you mean by not exactly? Oh, but you must not be ill. We have to work at our play this evening, and if you do not set about it, all of you, and in earnest, why, it will never be finished for the race-ball."