"He is very comme il faut, my papa," said Mademoiselle Noemie, "and as
honest as the day. Oh, an exceptional probity! You could trust him with
millions."

"Do you always obey him?" asked Newman.

"Obey him?"

"Do you do what he bids you?"

The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color in
either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected too much
for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity. "Why do you
ask me that?" she demanded.

"Because I want to know."

"You think me a bad girl?" And she gave a strange smile.

Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty, but he was
not in the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche's solicitude for
her "innocence," and he laughed as his eyes met hers. Her face was the
oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow
her searching little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous
intentions. She was pretty enough, certainly to make her father nervous;
but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot to affirm
that she had never parted with it. She had simply never had any; she had
been looking at the world since she was ten years old, and he would have
been a wise man who could tell her any secrets. In her long mornings at
the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and St. Johns; she had kept
an eye upon all the variously embodied human nature around her, and she
had formed her conclusions. In a certain sense, it seemed to Newman, M.
Nioche might be at rest; his daughter might do something very audacious,
but she would never do anything foolish. Newman, with his long-drawn,
leisurely smile, and his even, unhurried utterance, was always,
mentally, taking his time; and he asked himself, now, what she was
looking at him in that way for. He had an idea that she would like him
to confess that he did think her a bad girl.

"Oh, no," he said at last; "it would be very bad manners in me to judge
you that way. I don't know you."

"But my father has complained to you," said Mademoiselle Noemie.

"He says you are a coquette."

"He shouldn't go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you don't
believe it."

"No," said Newman gravely, "I don't believe it."

She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then pointed to a
small Italian picture, a Marriage of St. Catherine. "How should you like
that?" she asked.

"It doesn't please me," said Newman. "The young lady in the