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_ Newman called upon the comical duchess and found her at home.
An old gentleman with a high nose and a gold-headed cane was just taking
leave of her; he made Newman a protracted obeisance as he retired,
and our hero supposed that he was one of the mysterious grandees
with whom he had shaken hands at Madame de Bellegarde's ball.
The duchess, in her arm-chair, from which she did not move,
with a great flower-pot on one side of her, a pile of pink-covered
novels on the other, and a large piece of tapestry depending
from her lap, presented an expansive and imposing front;
but her aspect was in the highest degree gracious, and there was
nothing in her manner to check the effusion of his confidence.
She talked to him about flowers and books, getting launched
with marvelous promptitude; about the theatres, about the peculiar
institutions of his native country, about the humidity of Paris
about the pretty complexions of the American ladies, about his
impressions of France and his opinion of its female inhabitants.
All this was a brilliant monologue on the part of the duchess, who,
like many of her country-women, was a person of an affirmative rather
than an interrogative cast of mind, who made mots and put them
herself into circulation, and who was apt to offer you a present
of a convenient little opinion, neatly enveloped in the gilt paper
of a happy Gallicism. Newman had come to her with a grievance,
but he found himself in an atmosphere in which apparently
no cognizance was taken of grievance; an atmosphere into which
the chill of discomfort had never penetrated, and which seemed
exclusively made up of mild, sweet, stale intellectual perfumes.
The feeling with which he had watched Madame d'Outreville at
the treacherous festival of the Bellegardes came back to him;
she struck him as a wonderful old lady in a comedy, particularly well
up in her part. He observed before long that she asked him
no questions about their common friends; she made no allusion
to the circumstances under which he had been presented to her.
She neither feigned ignorance of a change in these circumstances
nor pretended to condole with him upon it; but she smiled and
discoursed and compared the tender-tinted wools of her tapestry,
as if the Bellegardes and their wickedness were not of this world.
"She is fighting shy!" said Newman to himself; and, having made
the observation, he was prompted to observe, farther, how the duchess
would carry off her indifference. She did so in a masterly manner.
There was not a gleam of disguised consciousness in those small,
clear, demonstrative eyes which constituted her nearest claim
to personal loveliness, there was not a symptom of apprehension
that Newman would trench upon the ground she proposed to avoid.
"Upon my word, she does it very well," he tacitly commented.
"They all hold together bravely, and, whether any one else can
trust them or not, they can certainly trust each other."
Newman, at this juncture, fell to admiring the duchess for her
fine manners. He felt, most accurately, that she was not
a grain less urbane than she would have been if his marriage
were still in prospect; but he felt also that she was not
a particle more urbane. He had come, so reasoned the duchess--
Heaven knew why he had come, after what had happened;
and for the half hour, therefore, she would be charmante.
But she would never see him again. Finding no ready-made
opportunity to tell his story, Newman pondered these things
more dispassionately than might have been expected;
he stretched his legs, as usual, and even chuckled a little,
appreciatively and noiselessly. And then as the duchess went
on relating a mot with which her mother had snubbed the great
Napoleon, it occurred to Newman that her evasion of a chapter
of French history more interesting to himself might possibly
be the result of an extreme consideration for his feelings.
Perhaps it was delicacy on the duchess's part--not policy.
He was on the point of saying something himself, to make
the chance which he had determined to give her still better,
when the servant announced another visitor. The duchess,
on hearing the name--it was that of an Italian prince--
gave a little imperceptible pout, and said to Newman, rapidly:
"I beg you to remain; I desire this visit to be short."
Newman said to himself, at this, that Madame d'Outreville intended,
after all, that they should discuss the Bellegardes together.
The prince was a short, stout man, with a head disproportionately large.
He had a dusky complexion and a bushy eyebrow, beneath which his
eye wore a fixed and somewhat defiant expression; he seemed to be
challenging you to insinuate that he was top-heavy. The duchess,
judging from her charge to Newman, regarded him as a bore;
but this was not apparent from the unchecked flow of her conversation.
She made a fresh series of mots, characterized with great felicity
the Italian intellect and the taste of the figs at Sorrento,
predicted the ultimate future of the Italian kingdom
(disgust with the brutal Sardinian rule and complete reversion,
throughout the peninsula, to the sacred sway of the Holy Father), and,
finally, gave a history of the love affairs of the Princess X----.
This narrative provoked some rectifications on the part of the prince,
who, as he said, pretended to know something about that matter;
and having satisfied himself that Newman was in no laughing mood,
either with regard to the size of his head or anything else,
he entered into the controversy with an animation for which the duchess,
when she set him down as a bore, could not have been prepared.
The sentimental vicissitudes of the Princess X----led to a discussion
of the heart history of Florentine nobility in general; the duchess
had spent five weeks in Florence and had gathered much information
on the subject. This was merged, in turn, in an examination of the
Italian heart per se. The duchess took a brilliantly heterodox view--
thought it the least susceptible organ of its kind that she had
ever encountered, related examples of its want of susceptibility,
and at last declared that for her the Italians were a people of ice.
The prince became flame to refute her, and his visit really
proved charming. Newman was naturally out of the conversation;
he sat with his head a little on one side, watching the interlocutors.
The duchess, as she talked, frequently looked at him with a smile,
as if to intimate, in the charming manner of her nation, that it
lay only with him to say something very much to the point.
But he said nothing at all, and at last his thoughts began to wander.
A singular feeling came over him--a sudden sense of the folly of
his errand. What under the sun had he to say to the duchess, after all?
Wherein would it profit him to tell her that the Bellegardes were
traitors and that the old lady, into the bargain was a murderess?
He seemed morally to have turned a sort of somersault, and to find
things looking differently in consequence. He felt a sudden stiffening
of his will and quickening of his reserve. What in the world had he been
thinking of when he fancied the duchess could help him, and that it
would conduce to his comfort to make her think ill of the Bellegardes?
What did her opinion of the Bellegardes matter to him?
It was only a shade more important than the opinion the Bellegardes
entertained of her. The duchess help him--that cold, stout, soft,
artificial woman help him?--she who in the last twenty minutes had
built up between them a wall of polite conversation in which she
evidently flattered herself that he would never find a gate.
Had it come to that--that he was asking favors of conceited people,
and appealing for sympathy where he had no sympathy to give? He rested
his arms on his knees, and sat for some minutes staring into his hat.
As he did so his ears tingled--he had come very near being an ass.
Whether or no the duchess would hear his story, he wouldn't tell it.
Was he to sit there another half hour for the sake of exposing
the Bellegardes? The Bellegardes be hanged! He got up abruptly,
and advanced to shake hands with his hostess.
"You can't stay longer?" she asked, very graciously.
"I am afraid not," he said.
She hesitated a moment, and then, "I had an idea you had something
particular to say to me," she declared.
Newman looked at her; he felt a little dizzy; for the moment he seemed to be
turning his somersault again. The little Italian prince came to his help:
"Ah, madam, who has not that?" he softly sighed.
"Don't teach Mr. Newman to say fadaises," said the duchess.
"It is his merit that he doesn't know how."
"Yes, I don't know how to say fadaises," said Newman, "and I
don't want to say anything unpleasant."
"I am sure you are very considerate," said the duchess with a smile;
and she gave him a little nod for good-by with which he took his departure.
Once in the street, he stood for some time on the pavement,
wondering whether, after all, he was not an ass not to have discharged
his pistol. And then again he decided that to talk to any one
whomsoever about the Bellegardes would be extremely disagreeable
to him. The least disagreeable thing, under the circumstances,
was to banish them from his mind, and never think of them again.
Indecision had not hitherto been one of Newman's weaknesses,
and in this case it was not of long duration. For three days after this
he did not, or at least he tried not to, think of the Bellegardes.
He dined with Mrs. Tristram, and on her mentioning their name,
he begged her almost severely to desist. This gave Tom Tristram
a much-coveted opportunity to offer his condolences.
He leaned forward, laying his hand on Newman's arm compressing his
lips and shaking his head. "The fact is my dear fellow, you see,
that you ought never to have gone into it. It was not your doing,
I know--it was all my wife. If you want to come down on her,
I'll stand off; I give you leave to hit her as hard as you like.
You know she has never had a word of reproach from me in her life,
and I think she is in need of something of the kind.
Why didn't you listen to ME? You know I didn't believe in the thing.
I thought it at the best an amiable delusion. I don't profess
to be a Don Juan or a gay Lothario,--that class of man, you know;
but I do pretend to know something about the harder sex. I have
never disliked a woman in my life that she has not turned out badly.
I was not at all deceived in Lizzie, for instance; I always had my
doubts about her. Whatever you may think of my present situation,
I must at least admit that I got into it with my eyes open.
Now suppose you had got into something like this box with Madame de Cintre.
You may depend upon it she would have turned out a stiff one.
And upon my word I don't see where you could have found your comfort.
Not from the marquis, my dear Newman; he wasn't a man you could go and talk
things over with in a sociable, common-sense way. Did he ever seem
to want to have you on the premises--did he ever try to see you alone?
Did he ever ask you to come and smoke a cigar with him of an evening,
or step in, when you had been calling on the ladies, and take something?
I don't think you would have got much encouragement out of HIM.
And as for the old lady, she struck one as an uncommonly strong dose.
They have a great expression here, you know; they call it 'sympathetic.'
Everything is sympathetic--or ought to be. Now Madame de Bellegarde
is about as sympathetic as that mustard-pot. They're a d--d
cold-blooded lot, any way; I felt it awfully at that ball of theirs.
I felt as if I were walking up and down in the Armory, in the Tower
of London! My dear boy, don't think me a vulgar brute for hinting
at it, but you may depend upon it, all they wanted was your money.
I know something about that; I can tell when people want one's money!
Why they stopped wanting yours I don't know; I suppose because
they could get some one else's without working so hard for it.
It isn't worth finding out. It may be that it was not Madame de Cintre
that backed out first, very likely the old woman put her up to it.
I suspect she and her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh?
You are well out of it, my boy; make up your mind to that.
If I express myself strongly it is all because I love you so much;
and from that point of view I may say I should as soon have thought
of making up to that piece of pale high-mightiness as I should have
thought of making up to the Obelisk in the Place des la Concorde."
Newman sat gazing at Tristram during this harangue with a lack-lustre eye;
never yet had he seemed to himself to have outgrown so completely the phase
of equal comradeship with Tom Tristram. Mrs. Tristram's glance at her husband
had more of a spark; she turned to Newman with a slightly lurid smile.
"You must at least do justice," she said, "to the felicity with which
Mr. Tristram repairs the indiscretions of a too zealous wife."
But even without the aid of Tom Tristram's conversational felicities,
Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again.
He could cease to think of them only when he ceased to
think of his loss and privation, and the days had as yet
but scantily lightened the weight of this incommodity.
In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him to cheer up; she assured him
that the sight of his countenance made her miserable.
"How can I help it?" he demanded with a trembling voice.
"I feel like a widower--and a widower who has not even
the consolation of going to stand beside the grave of his wife--
who has not the right to wear so much mourning as a weed on his hat.
I feel," he added in a moment "as if my wife had been murdered
and her assassins were still at large."
Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said,
with a smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less
successfully simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were;
"Are you very sure that you would have been happy?"
Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head. "That's weak,"
he said; "that won't do."
"Well," said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery,
"I don't believe you would have been happy."
Newman gave a little laugh. "Say I should have been miserable, then;
it's a misery I should have preferred to any happiness."
Mrs. Tristram began to muse. "I should have been curious to see;
it would have been very strange."
"Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?"
"A little," said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious.
Newman gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her,
turned away and took up his hat. She watched him a moment, and then
she said, "That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.
Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do. I wanted very much
to see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place;
second, what would happen if it should take place."
"So you didn't believe," said Newman, resentfully.
"Yes, I believed--I believed that it would take place, and that you
would be happy. Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations,
a very heartless creature. BUT," she continued, laying her hand upon
Newman's arm and hazarding a grave smile, "it was the highest flight
ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!"
Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel
for three months. Change of scene would do him good, and he would
forget his misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had
witnessed it. "I really feel," Newman rejoined, "as if to leave YOU,
at least, would do me good--and cost me very little effort.
You are growing cynical, you shock me and pain me."
"Very good," said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically,
as may be thought most probable. "I shall certainly see you again."
Newman was very willing to get away from Paris; the brilliant streets
he had walked through in his happier hours, and which then seemed to wear
a higher brilliancy in honor of his happiness, appeared now to be in
the secret of his defeat and to look down upon it in shining mockery.
He would go somewhere; he cared little where; and he made his preparations.
Then, one morning, at haphazard, he drove to the train that would transport
him to Boulogne and dispatch him thence to the shores of Britain.
As he rolled along in the train he asked himself what had become of
his revenge, and he was able to say that it was provisionally pigeon-holed
in a very safe place; it would keep till called for.
He arrived in London in the midst of what is called "the season,"
and it seemed to him at first that he might here put himself
in the way of being diverted from his heavy-heartedness.
He knew no one in all England, but the spectacle of the
mighty metropolis roused him somewhat from his apathy.
Anything that was enormous usually found favor with Newman,
and the multitudinous energies and industries of England stirred
within him a dull vivacity of contemplation. It is on record
that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality;
he took long walks and explored London in every direction;
he sat by the hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the adjoining
Drive, watching the people and the horses and the carriages;
the rosy English beauties, the wonderful English dandies,
and the splendid flunkies. He went to the opera and found
it better than in Paris; he went to the theatre and found
a surprising charm in listening to dialogue the finest
points of which came within the range of his comprehension.
He made several excursions into the country, recommended by
the waiter at his hotel, with whom, on this and similar points,
he had established confidential relations. He watched the deer
in Windsor Forest and admired the Thames from Richmond Hill;
he ate white-bait and brown-bread and butter at Greenwich,
and strolled in the grassy shadow of the cathedral of Canterbury.
He also visited the Tower of London and Madame Tussaud's exhibition.
One day he thought he would go to Sheffield, and then,
thinking again, he gave it up. Why should he go to Sheffield?
He had a feeling that the link which bound him to a possible
interest in the manufacture of cutlery was broken.
He had no desire for an "inside view" of any successful
enterprise whatever, and he would not have given the smallest
sum for the privilege of talking over the details of the most
"splendid" business with the shrewdest of overseers.
One afternoon he had walked into Hyde Park, and was slowly
threading his way through the human maze which edges the Drive.
The stream of carriages was no less dense, and Newman, as usual,
marveled at the strange, dingy figures which he saw taking the air
in some of the stateliest vehicles. They reminded him of what he had
read of eastern and southern countries, in which grotesque idols
and fetiches were sometimes taken out of their temples and carried
abroad in golden chariots to be displayed to the multitude.
He saw a great many pretty cheeks beneath high-plumed hats as he squeezed
his way through serried waves of crumpled muslin; and sitting on little
chairs at the base of the great serious English trees, he observed
a number of quiet-eyed maidens who seemed only to remind him afresh
that the magic of beauty had gone out of the world with Madame de Cintre:
to say nothing of other damsels, whose eyes were not quiet,
and who struck him still more as a satire on possible consolation.
He had been walking for some time, when, directly in front of him,
borne back by the summer breeze, he heard a few words uttered in that bright
Parisian idiom from which his ears had begun to alienate themselves.
The voice in which the words were spoken made them seem even more
like a thing with which he had once been familiar, and as he bent his
eyes it lent an identity to the commonplace elegance of the back hair
and shoulders of a young lady walking in the same direction as himself.
Mademoiselle Nioche, apparently, had come to seek a more rapid
advancement in London, and another glance led Newman to suppose
that she had found it. A gentleman was strolling beside her,
lending a most attentive ear to her conversation and too entranced
to open his lips. Newman did not hear his voice, but perceived
that he presented the dorsal expression of a well-dressed Englishman.
Mademoiselle Nioche was attracting attention: the ladies who passed
her turned round to survey the Parisian perfection of her toilet.
A great cataract of flounces rolled down from the young lady's waist
to Newman's feet; he had to step aside to avoid treading upon them.
He stepped aside, indeed, with a decision of movement which the
occasion scarcely demanded; for even this imperfect glimpse of Miss
Noemie had excited his displeasure. She seemed an odious blot
upon the face of nature; he wanted to put her out of his sight.
He thought of Valentin de Bellegarde, still green in the earth
of his burial--his young life clipped by this flourishing impudence.
The perfume of the young lady's finery sickened him; he turned his head
and tried to deflect his course; but the pressure of the crowd kept him
near her a few minutes longer, so that he heard what she was saying.
"Ah, I am sure he will miss me," she murmured. "It was very cruel in me
to leave him; I am afraid you will think me a very heartless creature.
He might perfectly well have come with us. I don't think he is very well,"
she added; "it seemed to me to-day that he was not very gay."
Newman wondered whom she was talking about, but just then an
opening among his neighbors enabled him to turn away, and he said
to himself that she was probably paying a tribute to British
propriety and playing at tender solicitude about her papa.
Was that miserable old man still treading the path of vice in her train?
Was he still giving her the benefit of his experience of affairs,
and had he crossed the sea to serve as her interpreter?
Newman walked some distance farther, and then began to retrace his steps
taking care not to traverse again the orbit of Mademoiselle Nioche.
At last he looked for a chair under the trees, but he had some
difficulty in finding an empty one. He was about to give up
the search when he saw a gentleman rise from the seat he had
been occupying, leaving Newman to take it without looking at
his neighbors. He sat there for some time without heeding them;
his attention was lost in the irritation and bitterness produced
by his recent glimpse of Miss Noemie's iniquitous vitality.
But at the end of a quarter of an hour, dropping his eyes,
he perceived a small pug-dog squatted upon the path near his feet--
a diminutive but very perfect specimen of its interesting species.
The pug was sniffing at the fashionable world, as it passed him,
with his little black muzzle, and was kept from extending his
investigation by a large blue ribbon attached to his collar with an
enormous rosette and held in the hand of a person seated next to Newman.
To this person Newman transferred his attention, and immediately
perceived that he was the object of all that of his neighbor,
who was staring up at him from a pair of little fixed white eyes.
These eyes Newman instantly recognized; he had been
sitting for the last quarter of an hour beside M. Nioche.
He had vaguely felt that some one was staring at him.
M. Nioche continued to stare; he appeared afraid to move,
even to the extent of evading Newman's glance.
"Dear me," said Newman; "are you here, too?" And he looked
at his neighbor's helplessness more grimly than he knew.
M. Nioche had a new hat and a pair of kid gloves;
his clothes, too, seemed to belong to a more recent antiquity
than of yore. Over his arm was suspended a lady's mantilla--
a light and brilliant tissue, fringed with white lace--
which had apparently been committed to his keeping;
and the little dog's blue ribbon was wound tightly round his hand.
There was no expression of recognition in his face--
or of anything indeed save a sort of feeble, fascinated dread;
Newman looked at the pug and the lace mantilla, and then he met
the old man's eyes again. "You know me, I see," he pursued.
"You might have spoken to me before." M. Nioche still said nothing,
but it seemed to Newman that his eyes began faintly to water.
"I didn't expect," our hero went on, "to meet you so far from--
from the Cafe de la Patrie." The old man remained silent,
but decidedly Newman had touched the source of tears.
His neighbor sat staring and Newman added, "What's the matter,
M. Nioche? You used to talk--to talk very prettily.
Don't you remember you even gave lessons in conversation?"
At this M. Nioche decided to change his attitude.
He stooped and picked up the pug, lifted it to his face and wiped
his eyes on its little soft back. "I'm afraid to speak to you,"
he presently said, looking over the puppy's shoulder.
"I hoped you wouldn't notice me. I should have moved away,
but I was afraid that if I moved you would notice me.
So I sat very still."
"I suspect you have a bad conscience, sir," said Newman.
The old man put down the little dog and held it carefully in his lap.
Then he shook his head, with his eyes still fixed upon his interlocutor.
"No, Mr. Newman, I have a good conscience," he murmured.
"Then why should you want to slink away from me?"
"Because--because you don't understand my position."
"Oh, I think you once explained it to me," said Newman.
"But it seems improved."
"Improved!" exclaimed M. Nioche, under his breath.
"Do you call this improvement?" And he glanced at the treasures
in his arms.
"Why, you are on your travels," Newman rejoined. "A visit to London
in the season is certainly a sign of prosperity."
M. Nioche, in answer to this cruel piece of irony,
lifted the puppy up to his face again, peering at Newman with
his small blank eye-holes. There was something almost imbecile
in the movement, and Newman hardly knew whether he was taking
refuge in a convenient affectation of unreason, or whether
he had in fact paid for his dishonor by the loss of his wits.
In the latter case, just now, he felt little more tenderly
to the foolish old man than in the former. Responsible or not,
he was equally an accomplice of his detestably mischievous daughter.
Newman was going to leave him abruptly, when a ray of entreaty
appeared to disengage itself from the old man's misty gaze.
"Are you going away?" he asked.
"Do you want me to stay?" said Newman.
"I should have left you--from consideration. But my dignity
suffers at your leaving me--that way."
"Have you got anything particular to say to me?"
M. Nioche looked around him to see that no one was listening, and then
he said, very softly but distinctly, "I have NOT forgiven her!"
Newman gave a short laugh, but the old man seemed for the moment
not to perceive it; he was gazing away, absently, at some
metaphysical image of his implacability. "It doesn't much
matter whether you forgive her or not," said Newman.
"There are other people who won't, I assure you."
"What has she done?" M. Nioche softly questioned, turning round again.
"I don't know what she does, you know."
"She has done a devilish mischief; it doesn't matter what," said Newman.
"She's a nuisance; she ought to be stopped."
M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it very gently
upon Newman's arm. "Stopped, yes," he whispered. "That's it.
Stopped short. She is running away--she must be stopped."
Then he paused a moment and looked round him. "I mean to stop her,"
he went on. "I am only waiting for my chance."
"I see," said Newman, laughing briefly again.
"She is running away and you are running after her.
You have run a long distance!"
But M. Nioche stared insistently: "I shall stop her!"
he softly repeated.
He had hardly spoken when the crowd in front of them separated,
as if by the impulse to make way for an important personage.
Presently, through the opening, advanced Mademoiselle Nioche,
attended by the gentleman whom Newman had lately observed.
His face being now presented to our hero, the latter recognized
the irregular features, the hardly more regular complexion,
and the amiable expression of Lord Deepmere. Noemie, on finding
herself suddenly confronted with Newman, who, like M. Nioche,
had risen from his seat, faltered for a barely perceptible instant.
She gave him a little nod, as if she had seen him yesterday,
and then, with a good-natured smile, "Tiens, how we keep meeting!"
she said. She looked consummately pretty, and the front of her
dress was a wonderful work of art. She went up to her father,
stretching out her hands for the little dog, which he submissively
placed in them, and she began to kiss it and murmur over it:
"To think of leaving him all alone,--what a wicked,
abominable creature he must believe me! He has been very unwell,"
she added, turning and affecting to explain to Newman, with a
spark of infernal impudence, fine as a needlepoint, in her eye.
"I don't think the English climate agrees with him."
"It seems to agree wonderfully well with his mistress," said Newman.
"Do you mean me? I have never been better, thank you,"
Miss Noemie declared. "But with MILORD"--and she gave a brilliant
glance at her late companion--"how can one help being well?"
She seated herself in the chair from which her father had risen,
and began to arrange the little dog's rosette.
Lord Deepmere carried off such embarrassment as might be incidental to this
unexpected encounter with the inferior grace of a male and a Briton.
He blushed a good deal, and greeted the object of his late momentary
aspiration to rivalry in the favor of a person other than the mistress
of the invalid pug with an awkward nod and a rapid ejaculation--
an ejaculation to which Newman, who often found it hard to understand
the speech of English people, was able to attach no meaning.
Then the young man stood there, with his hand on his hip,
and with a conscious grin, staring askance at Miss Noemie.
Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he said, turning to Newman,
"Oh, you know her?"
"Yes," said Newman, "I know her. I don't believe you do."
"Oh dear, yes, I do!" said Lord Deepmere, with another grin.
"I knew her in Paris--by my poor cousin Bellegarde you know.
He knew her, poor fellow, didn't he? It was she you know,
who was at the bottom of his affair. Awfully sad, wasn't it?"
continued the young man, talking off his embarrassment as his
simple nature permitted. "They got up some story about its
being for the Pope; about the other man having said something
against the Pope's morals. They always do that, you know.
They put it on the Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves.
But it was about HER morals--SHE was the Pope!"
Lord Deepmere pursued, directing an eye illumined by this
pleasantry toward Mademoiselle Nioche, who was bending gracefully
over her lap-dog, apparently absorbed in conversation with it.
"I dare say you think it rather odd that I should--a-- keep up
the acquaintance," the young man resumed. "But she couldn't help it,
you know, and Bellegarde was only my twentieth cousin. I dare say
you think it's rather cheeky, my showing with her in Hyde Park.
But you see she isn't known yet, and she's in such very good form"--
And Lord Deepmere's conclusion was lost in the attesting glance
which he again directed toward the young lady.
Newman turned away; he was having more of her than he relished.
M. Nioche had stepped aside on his daughter's approach, and he stood there,
within a very small compass, looking down hard at the ground.
It had never yet, as between him and Newman, been so apposite
to place on record the fact that he had not forgiven his daughter.
As Newman was moving away he looked up and drew near to him,
and Newman, seeing the old man had something particular to say,
bent his head for an instant.
"You will see it some day in the papers,"' murmured M. Nioche.
Our hero departed to hide his smile, and to this day, though the newspapers
form his principal reading, his eyes have not been arrested by any paragraph
forming a sequel to this announcement. _
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