"Why, just Henry and Jean. Jean spoke to me first for Henry, who, it seems, had got him to ask me whether I would allow him to ask your permission to marry me. I answered that he ought to have asked _you_ first and not me--" "You are a real little Bijou, my darling." "But that it really did not matter, as I did not want to marry him." "He is not rich enough for you, my dear." "Oh, I don't know anything about that. And then, too, all that is quite the same to me, but I should not like Henry for a husband. I know him too well." "Ah! and what about Jean?" "Jean, too, I should not like as a husband. That is just what I told him, when, after I had refused Henry, he began again on his own account." "They go ahead--my grandchildren. Now I can understand how it is that, for the last few days, they have had faces as long as fiddles." There was a short silence, and then Madame de Bracieux remarked, as though in conclusion: "I know then, now, what your answer is to my poor old friend Clagny." "How do you know, though?" "Because if you will not have either of your cousins, who are, both of them, in their different ways, very taking, it is scarcely probable that you would accept an old friend of your grandmother's." "But he, too, is very taking!" "Yes, that's true; but he is sixty years old!" "He does not look it!" "He is though." "I know; but that does not make any difference to the fact that I should not mind marrying him any more than I should Jean or Henry." "You do not know what marriage is; you do not understand." Bijou half closed her beautiful, bright eyes. "Yes," she said, speaking slowly, "I do understand quite well, grandmamma." "Well, all this is no answer for me to give to M. de Clagny." "Is he coming to-day?" "He is coming directly." Bijou moved uneasily on her footstool, and then, after a moment's consideration, she said: "You can tell him, grandmamma, that I am very much touched, and very much flattered that he should have thought of me, but that I do not want to marry yet--" And then, laying her head on the marchioness's lap, she added: "because I am too happy here with you." "My little Bijou! my darling Bijou!" murmured Madame de Bracieux, stooping to kiss the pretty face lifted towards her, "you know what a comfort you are to me; but, all the same, you cannot stay for ever with your old grandmother. I am not saying that, though, in order to persuade you into a marriage that would be perfect folly." Denyse looked up at the marchioness, as she asked: "Folly? But why folly?" "Because M. de Clagny is thirty-eight years older than you are, and he will be quite infirm just when you are in your prime; and such marriages have certain inconveniences which--well--which you would be the first to find out." Bijou had risen from her low seat on hearing the sound of carriage-wheels, which drew up in front of the hall-door. She looked through the window, and then ran away, saying: "Here he is, grandmamma!"