"As it vexes you so much I won't wear that costume. We will get Jean to design another for me."
He seized the hand that was resting on his arm and pressed it to his lips with an almost brutal tenderness.
Bijou did not appear to like this passionate display of feeling. She drew her hand away quietly, but there was a strange gleam in her eyes as she said:
"Take care of the gate, it is a sharp turn remember, and you are not in luck to-day."
She then began to collect her parcels calmly, and until they arrived at the door of the _château_ she was silent and thoughtful. The first dinner-bell was just ringing, and Bijou ran upstairs to her room, and ten minutes later entered the drawing-room, arrayed in a dainty dress of rose-leaf coloured chiffon, with a large bunch of roses on the shoulder.
"Why! you don't mean to say that you are here already!" exclaimed Madame de Rueille admiringly. "I will wager anything that that slow coach of a Paul is not ready."
"Did you do all the commissions?" asked the marchioness.
"Yes, grandmamma, and I have a special one for you. The Juzencourts wished me to tell you that M. de Clagny is coming back to live at The Norinière, and that he will come every year."
"Oh!" exclaimed Madame de Bracieux, looking very delighted, "I am glad to hear that. I never expected to see him come back here."
"Well, because when he was here he had a great grief, just at an age when painful impressions can never be effaced."
"At what age is that?" asked Jean de Blaye, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.
"Forty-eight. And when you are that age, you will not be as fond of ridiculing everything as you are now, my dear boy; and it won't be so long before you get there as you think either."
"So much the better," he answered, smiling; "that must be the ideal age--the age when one's heart is at rest."
"In some cases it is at rest before that age," said the marchioness slily, looking at her nephew.
"Yes, but it wakes up again, or, at least, it might wake up; one is not quite easy about it; but at forty-eight ..."
"Ah! that's your opinion. Well, it is twelve years ago now since my old friend Clagny was forty-eight. He must therefore be sixty at present, and I would wager anything that his heart has never been at rest--never. You understand me?" And then in a lower tone, so that Bijou, who was just talking to Bertrade, should not hear, she added: "Neither his heart nor he himself."