"Sit down," said Bijou, pushing Mademoiselle Dubuisson into a cosy arm-chair.
Jeanne sat down, and looked round at the pretty room. The walls were hung with pale pink cretonne, with a design of large white poppies. The ceiling, too, was pink, and the Louis Seize furniture was lacquered pink. There were flowers everywhere, in strange-shaped glass vases, and the air was laden with a delicious, penetrating perfume, a mixture of chypre, iris, and a scent like new-mown hay.
Jeanne inhaled this perfume with delight.
"What do you put in your room to make it smell like this?" she asked.
"Does it smell of something? I do not smell anything--anyhow, I don't use scent for it," answered Bijou, sniffing the air around her with all her might.
"Oh! why, that's incredible!" exclaimed Jeanne astounded. "But do you mean truly that you do not put anything at all to scent your room?"
Denyse was moving about, getting everything she required before changing her dress. She was not long in putting on her habit, and as she stood before the long glass, putting a few finishing touches to her toilette, Jeanne could not help admiring her.
"How well it fits you!" she said. "It looks as though it had been moulded on you--it really is perfection! And then, too, you have such a pretty figure!"
Denyse was just putting a pearl pin into her white cravat. The point broke with a little sharp click.
"It doesn't matter," answered Bijou, "for it was not up to much. If I win my bet with M. de Bernès, I will let him give me a strong pin," and then, with a laugh, she added: "and not an expensive one, so that it will not seem like a present."
"Well! you are like grandmamma. She was scandalised, grandmamma was."
"Well, it is odd, you know! And what have you been betting--you and M. de Bernès?"
"I, that there would be, at least, one accident at the paper-chase; and he, that there would not be one at all."
"Oh, no! it is not very possible! There always are accidents; it would be the first paper-chase without one. Take notice that it is merely a question of a fall--just a simple fall--the person falls down, and is picked up again. I do not predict that anyone will be killed, you understand?"
"Well, don't you go and have a fall, at any rate."