第57章

Three days after his introduction to the family of Madame de Cintre, Newman, coming in toward evening, found upon his table the card of the Marquis de Bellegarde.On the following day he received a note informing him that the Marquise de Bellegarde would be grateful for the honor of his company at dinner.

He went, of course, though he had to break another engagement to do it.He was ushered into the room in which Madame de Bellegarde had received him before, and here he found his venerable hostess, surrounded by her entire family.

The room was lighted only by the crackling fire, which illuminated the very small pink slippers of a lady who, seated in a low chair, was stretching out her toes before it.

This lady was the younger Madame de Bellegarde.Madame de Cintre was seated at the other end of the room, holding a little girl against her knee, the child of her brother Urbain, to whom she was apparently relating a wonderful story.

Valentin was sitting on a puff, close to his sister-in-law, into whose ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense.

The marquis was stationed before the fire, with his head erect and his hands behind him, in an attitude of formal expectancy.

Old Madame de Bellegarde stood up to give Newman her greeting, and there was that in the way she did so which seemed to measure narrowly the extent of her condescension.

"We are all alone, you see, we have asked no one else,"she said, austerely.

"I am very glad you didn't; this is much more sociable," said Newman.

"Good evening, sir," and he offered his hand to the marquis.

M.de Bellegarde was affable, but in spite of his dignity he was restless.

He began to pace up and down the room, he looked out of the long windows, he took up books and laid them down again.Young Madame de Bellegarde gave Newman her hand without moving and without looking at him.

"You may think that is coldness," exclaimed Valentin; "but it is not, it is warmth.It shows she is treating you as an intimate.

Now she detests me, and yet she is always looking at me.""No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!" cried the lady.

"If Mr.Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it again."But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was already making his way across the room to Madame de Cintre.

She looked at him as she shook hands, but she went on with the story she was telling her little niece.She had only two or three phrases to add, but they were apparently of great moment.

She deepened her voice, smiling as she did so, and the little girl gazed at her with round eyes.

"But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella,"said Madame de Cintre, "and carried her off to live with him in the Land of the Pink Sky.There she was so happy that she forgot all her troubles, and went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach drawn by five hundred white mice.Poor Florabella," she exclaimed to Newman, "had suffered terribly.""She had had nothing to eat for six months," said little Blanche.

"Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a plum-cake as big as that ottoman," said Madame de Cintre.

"That quite set her up again."

"What a checkered career!" said Newman."Are you very fond of children?"He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say it.

"I like to talk with them," she answered; "we can talk with them so much more seriously than with grown persons.

That is great nonsense that I have been telling Blanche, but it is a great deal more serious than most of what we say in society.""I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche's age,"said Newman, laughing."Were you happy at your ball, the other night?""Ecstatically!"

"Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society," said Newman.

"I don't believe that."

"It was my own fault if I was not happy.The ball was very pretty, and every one very amiable.""It was on your conscience," said Newman, "that you had annoyed your mother and your brother."Madame de Cintre looked at him a moment without answering.

"That is true," she replied at last."I had undertaken more than I could carry out.I have very little courage;I am not a heroine." She said this with a certain soft emphasis;but then, changing her tone, "I could never have gone through the sufferings of the beautiful Florabella," she added, not even for her prospective rewards.

Dinner was announced, and Newman betook himself to the side of the old Madame de Bellegarde.The dining-room, at the end of a cold corridor, was vast and sombre; the dinner was simple and delicately excellent.Newman wondered whether Madame de Cintre had had something to do with ordering the repast and greatly hoped she had.Once seated at table, with the various members of the ancient house of Bellegarde around him, he asked himself the meaning of his position.

Was the old lady responding to his advances? Did the fact that he was a solitary guest augment his credit or diminish it?

Were they ashamed to show him to other people, or did they wish to give him a sign of sudden adoption into their last reserve of favor?

Newman was on his guard; he was watchful and conjectural;and yet at the same time he was vaguely indifferent.

Whether they gave him a long rope or a short one he was there now, and Madame de Cintre was opposite to him.

She had a tall candlestick on each side of her;she would sit there for the next hour, and that was enough.

The dinner was extremely solemn and measured; he wondered whether this was always the state of things in "old families."Madame de Bellegarde held her head very high, and fixed her eyes, which looked peculiarly sharp in her little, finely-wrinkled white face, very intently upon the table-service.The marquis appeared to have decided that the fine arts offered a safe subject of conversation, as not leading to startling personal revelations.

Every now and then, having learned from Newman that he had been through the museums of Europe, he uttered some polished aphorism upon the flesh-tints of Rubens and the good taste of Sansovino.