"Then you consent?"
"Yes."
"My darling!" he stammered out, "my darling!"
"I told grandmamma this morning," continued Bijou, "and I must confess
that she was not delighted. She did all she could to make me change my
mind."
"I can quite understand that."
"She thinks that it is mad, for you as well as for me, to marry when
there is such disproportion of age; and then, she did not say so, but
I could see that there was something troubling her, which troubles me
too, though to a much less degree."
"And it is?"
"The disproportion in money matters. Yes--it appears that you are
horribly rich. Grandmamma said so yesterday, when she told me that you
had asked for my hand."
"What can it matter, Bijou, dear, whether I am a little more or less
rich?"
"It matters a great deal, with grandmamma's ideas about things
especially. Oh, it is not that she thinks it humiliating for me to be
married without anything, for I have nothing, you know, in comparison
with what you have! No, she looks upon marriage as a partnership, or
exchange of what one has. '_Give me what you've got, and I'll give
you what I've got_,' as the country people here say. Well, you have
your name, which is a good one, and your money, which makes you a very
rich man; on my side, I have my name, which is rather a good one, too,
and my youth, which certainly counts for something."
"Very well, then, and how can the disproportion of what we have make
your grandmamma uneasy?"
"Well, it's like this, you know--grandmamma is very fond of me, and
she thinks that, as I am thirty-eight years younger than you, you
might die before me, and that, after living for years in very great
luxury, after letting myself get accustomed to every comfort, which,
up to the present, I have not had, I might suddenly find myself very
poor and very wretched at an age when it would be too late to begin
life over again, and so I should suffer very much on account of the
bad habits I had contracted, and which I should not be able to drop--"
"You know very well, my adored Bijou, that everything I possess is and
will be yours. My will is already made, in which I leave everything to
you, even if you do not become my wife."
"Yes, but she always says a will could be torn up."
"If your grandmamma would prefer it, I could make it over to you in a
marriage settlement."
Bijou laughed.
"Ah! she would imagine, then, that we might be divorced, and a divorce
does away with all things--"
"But, supposing I make out in the marriage contract that the half of
what I possess now is really yours, and supposing I made over the rest
to you, only reserving to myself the interest?"
Bijou shook her head, and then, with a pretty movement of playful
affection, she threw her soft arms round M. de Clagny's neck, and
said:
"I don't want you to give me anything but happiness, and I am sure you
will give me plenty of that. I hope you will live a very, very long
time, and it would not matter to me, when I am old, if I were to find
myself poor again, comparatively speaking."
"And I," he said, covering Denyse's face and hair with kisses, "I
could not go on living with the thought that I might be taken away
without your future being provided for in the way in which I should
wish it to be."
"Don't talk about all those things," she murmured. "I want to think
that I shall never be separated from you--never, never!"
Trying, in spite of the darkness, to look into Bijou's eyes, he asked
anxiously:
"Will you be able to love me a little, as I love you?"
Without answering, she held her pretty lips up to him, but just at
that moment the sound of voices made them move away from each other
abruptly.
Only a few yards away from them they could hear several persons
talking in low voices, and also the sound of heavy footsteps walking
with measured tread. It seemed as though just there, quite near to
them, a heavy burden were being carried along, whilst, in the midst of
the darkness, lights kept passing by.
"It's very odd," said M. de Clagny; "one would think something had
happened."
Bijou, however, who had stopped short, her heart beating fast with
anxiety, struck with the strangeness of the little procession, put her
hand on the count's arm, and said, quite tranquilly:
"Oh, no! it must be the men going back to the farm. Just now they are
at work up at the house through the day, and then, when they have had
something to eat, they go back home."
"It seemed to me, though, that the lanterns were on the way towards
the house."
She was walking along with her hand on his arm, and a thrill of joy
ran through him as he drew this beautiful girl, who had just promised
herself to him, closer still, in a passionate embrace.
They returned slowly to the house along the avenues, meeting several
carriages, which were bearing away the departing guests.
"How's that?" exclaimed Bijou, in surprise. "They are going away
already--but what about the cotillion? Is it very late?"
On arriving at the hall-door steps, they met the La Balues coming
towards their carriage.
"How's this?" asked Bijou. "You are going? But why?"
M. de la Balue mumbled out some unintelligible words, whilst his son
and daughter, looking very sad, shook hands with Bijou.
"Well, what long faces they are making," remarked M. de Clagny,
beginning to get anxious in his turn. "Ah! what's that? Whatever's the
matter?"
In the hall there was a long pool of water. The servants were going
backwards and forwards quickly, looking awestruck, and then Pierrot
came in sight, his eyes swollen with crying, and his hands full of
flowers. Madame de Rueille was following him, carrying flowers, too.
Bijou stopped short, thunderstruck; but M. de Clagny hurried up to
Madame de Rueille.
"What has happened?" he asked.
"M. Giraud has drowned himself," answered Bertrade. "They have just
brought him back here. It was the miller who found him near the dam--"
And then, seeing that Pierrot was gazing at her in consternation,
shaking his flowers about at the end of his long arms in sheer
desperation, she added, in a hard voice:
"Yes, I know very well that grandmamma has forbidden anyone to speak
of it before Bijou, but, for my part, I want her to know about it."