"No!" protested Pierrot, "it was not quite like that. You said, 'Let us go down Rue Rabelais, I should like to see it.' And, then, as he hesitated--for we may as well give him credit for having hesitated--you stuck to it as hard as you could." "But," put in M. de Jonzac, seeing that Denyse looked annoyed, "what interest could your cousin possibly have in wanting to go down that street?" "That's what I wondered," said Pierrot, looking puzzled; and then, suddenly taken with another idea, he added: "I can tell you there was somebody who didn't like it, and that was M. de Bernes. I don't know what took him, but he did pull a long face. Oh, my! I can tell you he did look blue." Henry de Bracieux laughed. "I know why he was pulling such a long face, poor old Bernes; he was afraid of being blown up--" "Blown up?" asked Bijou, innocently opening her limpid eyes wide in surprise, whilst Jeanne's face, usually so impassive, turned almost purple. "Blown up? by whom?" And then, as there was a dead silence, which became more and more embarrassing, Bijou turned to her friend. "Let's go out for a stroll in the garden, Jeanne, shall we?" she said. "I'll come with you," remarked Pierrot promptly; but Bijou pushed him gently back. "No! we shall do very well by ourselves, thank you; you would worry us." As the two girls were descending the hall-door steps, Bijou said to Jeanne, who was just behind her, and who had not quite recovered from her embarrassment: "I know why you looked so conscious just now; you were thinking of the gossip about that actress--I've forgotten her name--whom M. de Bernes knows. I had not thought of it at the time, and so it did not trouble me. You see I was right when I told you that it was a mistake to listen to Mere Rafut's tales." "Yes, you always are right!" answered Jeanne pensively; "I said then that you are always right!" * * * * * After Bijou's departure, the men one after another left the drawing-room. "What's the matter, Bertrade?" asked the marchioness, as soon as she found herself alone with Madame de Rueille. "Paul looked very queer during breakfast!" "Did you think so?" said the young wife, not wishing either to acknowledge it or to tell an untruth about the matter. "I did think so, and you looked queer too; and as I watched you both, an idea dawned upon me." "And what is this idea?" "It is that my dear little Marcel is no more ill than I am, and that the letter you showed me this morning is nothing but a pretext for getting your husband away from here; is that so?" Madame de Rueille was too straightforward to be able to deny the fact. "It is so!" "And so you are jealous, and jealous of Bijou?" "Not jealous, oh, dear no! not in the least; but anxious." "About Bijou?" Madame de Rueille looked serious as she shook her pretty head. "No, about Paul." "You are not afraid of your husband going too far, I suppose?" "No!" "Well, what then?"