Part 16 (1/2)

”Very true!” said M. de Bellegarde. ”Otherwise perhaps I should not be penniless.”

”Is it true,” asked Newman in a moment, ”that you are so proud? I had already heard it.”

Madame de Cintre smiled. ”Do you find me so?”

”Oh,” said Newman, ”I am no judge. If you are proud with me, you will have to tell me. Otherwise I shall not know it.”

Madame de Cintre began to laugh. ”That would be pride in a sad position!” she said.

”It would be partly,” Newman went on, ”because I shouldn't want to know it. I want you to treat me well.”

Madame de Cintre, whose laugh had ceased, looked at him with her head half averted, as if she feared what he was going to say.

”Mrs. Tristram told you the literal truth,” he went on; ”I want very much to know you. I didn't come here simply to call to-day; I came in the hope that you might ask me to come again.”

”Oh, pray come often,” said Madame de Cintre.

”But will you be at home?” Newman insisted. Even to himself he seemed a trifle ”pus.h.i.+ng,” but he was, in truth, a trifle excited.

”I hope so!” said Madame de Cintre.

Newman got up. ”Well, we shall see,” he said smoothing his hat with his coat-cuff.

”Brother,” said Madame de Cintre, ”invite Mr. Newman to come again.”

The Count Valentin looked at our hero from head to foot with his peculiar smile, in which impudence and urbanity seemed perplexingly commingled. ”Are you a brave man?” he asked, eying him askance.

”Well, I hope so,” said Newman.

”I rather suspect so. In that case, come again.”

”Ah, what an invitation!” murmured Madame de Cintre, with something painful in her smile.

”Oh, I want Mr. Newman to come--particularly,” said the young man. ”It will give me great pleasure. I shall be desolate if I miss one of his visits. But I maintain he must be brave. A stout heart, sir!” And he offered Newman his hand.

”I shall not come to see you; I shall come to see Madame de Cintre,”

said Newman.

”You will need all the more courage.”

”Ah, Valentin!” said Madame de Cintre, appealingly.

”Decidedly,” cried Madame de Bellegarde, ”I am the only person here capable of saying something polite! Come to see me; you will need no courage,” she said.

Newman gave a laugh which was not altogether an a.s.sent, and took his leave. Madame de Cintre did not take up her sister's challenge to be gracious, but she looked with a certain troubled air at the retreating guest.

CHAPTER VII

One evening very late, about a week after his visit to Madame de Cintre, Newman's servant brought him a card. It was that of young M. de Bellegarde. When, a few moments later, he went to receive his visitor, he found him standing in the middle of his great gilded parlor and eying it from cornice to carpet. M. de Bellegarde's face, it seemed to Newman, expressed a sense of lively entertainment. ”What the devil is he laughing at now?” our hero asked himself. But he put the question without acrimony, for he felt that Madame de Cintre's brother was a good fellow, and he had a presentiment that on this basis of good fellows.h.i.+p they were destined to understand each other. Only, if there was anything to laugh at, he wished to have a glimpse of it too.