"You think he is nice; you like him?" said the marchioness. "Yes, but how? You would not marry him, I presume?" "Oh, no!" answered Bijou, laughing, "I don't want to marry him." Just as they were all leaving the table, Jean de Blaye asked: "Has anyone any commissions for Pont-sur-Loire?" "What!" exclaimed Bijou, in surprise, "you are going off to Pont-sur-Loire like that, all by yourself? Why, whatever are you going to do there, I wonder?" "What am I going to do there?" he said, slightly disconcerted. "Why, I have some things to get." "Will you take me?" "Take you? But--" Ever since the evening when he had told Bijou that he loved her, he had avoided, as much as possible, all opportunities of being alone with her. She, on her part, had not changed her behaviour towards him or Henry de Bracieux in any way. She was just as free and cordial in her manner with them as she had been before refusing them her hand; and, indeed, it seemed as though she had forgotten they had proposed to her. "What?"--she asked, looking astonished. "You won't take me with you?" Thoroughly uncomfortable, and dreading the long _tete-a-tete_, yet not daring in the presence of all the others to refuse to take Bijou, he answered, in a joking tone: "Why, yes! On the contrary, I am highly flattered by the honour you are doing me!" "That's all right, then. You are very kind." "Oh, very; but, all the same, you will have to take someone else to be with you as well, because I have some business." "Oh!" said Denyse, in a disappointed tone, "you don't want me with you when we get there." "But, Bijou, my dear," put in Madame de Bracieux, "you could not, anyhow, go there--just you two! It does not matter if Jean is your first cousin; it would not be the thing, you know! You must take Josephine with you; and even then I don't know whether I ought to allow it--" "But whatever do you want to do in Pont-sur-Loire?" she added, after a pause. "Oh, only some errands, grandmamma; you forget that there are always errands to be done for the house. And then, too, I can go and see Jeanne; it is just the day when M. Spiegel is busy and does not go so that I shall not interrupt their billing and cooing." "It does not seem to me as though they do much billing and cooing!" said M. de Jonzac. "I was watching them yesterday at the paper-chase, and I'm very much mistaken if that engagement is not a very half-and-half sort of affair." "But why should you think that, Uncle Alexis?" asked Bijou, looking troubled. "Because the girl looks sad, and the professor indifferent. Haven't you noticed that?" "No; but then I don't notice things much," she answered. * * * * * On the way from Bracieux to Pont-sur-Loire, Bijou and Jean were silent.