The de Rueille children, leaving the abbe, who continued calling out the loto numbers in a monotonous tone, went sliding across to the young girl, and hung about her. Their mother called them back. "Leave Bijou alone, children; you worry her!" "Robert! Marcel! come here," said the abbe, getting up. "Oh, no," protested Bijou, "let them alone; I like to have them!" She took the basket from her neck, and was just about to put it down on the billiard-table, when she suddenly stopped. "Oh, no! I must have mercy on the game." "Isn't she nice? she thinks of everything," murmured Henry de Bracieux, quite touched. "Come and kiss me, Bijou," said the marchioness. Denyse had just put her basket down on a divan. She took from it a full-blown rose, and went quickly across to her grandmother, whom she kissed over and over again in a fondling way as a child. "There," she said, presenting her rose, "it is the most beautiful one of all!" Her voice was rather high-pitched, rather "a head-voice" perhaps, but it sounded so young and clear, and then, too, she spoke so distinctly, and with such an admirable pronunciation. "You have not seen Pierrot, then?" asked the marchioness. "Pierrot?" said Bijou, as though she were trying to recall something to her memory. "Why, yes, I have seen him; he was with me a minute or two helping me to gather the flowers, and then he went away to his father, who was shooting rabbits in the wood." "I might have thought as much; that boy does not do a thing." "But, grandmamma, he is here for his holidays." "His holidays if you like; but, all the same, if a tutor has been engaged for him, it is surely so that he may work." "But he must take some rest now and again, poor Pierrot--and his tutor too." "They do nothing else, though. Well, as long as my brother knows it, and as long as it suits him--" "It suits him to-day, anyhow, for he told them to join him in the wood." "He told _them_?" repeated the old lady; and then she continued slily, "and so the tutor has been gathering roses, too?" "Yes," replied Denyse, with her beautiful, frank smile, and not noticing her grandmother's mocking intonation, "he has been gathering roses, too." "He probably enjoyed that more than shooting rabbits," said the marchioness, glancing at a tall young man who was just entering the room, "for if he went to join your uncle in the wood, he did not stay long with him anyhow!" "Why--no!"--said Bijou in astonishment, and then leaving her grandmother, she advanced to meet the young man. "Did you not find uncle, Monsieur Giraud?" she asked. "Oh, yes, mademoiselle," he replied, turning very red. "Yes, certainly, we found M. de Jonzac; but--I--I was obliged to come in--as I have some of Pierre's exercises to correct." And then, doubtlessly wanting to explain how it was that he had come into that room, he added, slightly confused: "I just came in here to see whether I had left my books about--I thought--but--I do not see them here--"