m, "that your
friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?"

"I think it extremely probable. Those people are very capable of that
sort of thing."

"It is like something in a play," said Newman; "that dark old house over
there looks as if wicked things had been done in it, and might be done
again."

"They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintre
tells me, and there, during the summer this scheme must have been
hatched."

"MUST have been; mind that!" said Tristram.

"After all," suggested Newman, after a silence, "she may be in trouble
about something else."

"If it is something else, then it is something worse," said Mrs.
Tristram, with rich decision.

Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation. "Is it
possible," he asked at last, "that they do that sort of thing over here?
that helpless women are bullied into marrying men they hate?"

"Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it," said Mrs.
Tristram. "There is plenty of bullying everywhere."

"A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York," said Tristram.
"Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed, or all three together, into
marrying nasty fellows. There is no end of that always going on in the
Fifth Avenue, and other bad things besides. The Mysteries of the Fifth
Avenue! Some one ought to show them up."

"I don't believe it!" said Newman, very gravely. "I don't believe that,
in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion. I don't believe
there have been a dozen cases of it since the country began."

"Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!" cried Tristram.

"The spread eagle ought to use his wings," said Mrs. Tristram. "Fly to
the rescue of Madame de Cintre!"

"To her rescue?"

"Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off. Marry her
yourself."

Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently, "I should
suppose she had heard enough of marrying," he said. "The kindest way to
treat her would be to admire her, and yet never to speak of it. But that
sort of thing is infamous," he added; "it makes me feel savage to hear
of it."

He heard of it, however, more than once afterward. Mrs. Tristram again
saw Madame de Cintre, and again found her looking very sad. But on these
occasions there had been no tears; her beautiful eyes were clear and
still. "She is cold, calm, and hopeless," Mrs. Tristram declared, and
she added that on her mentioning that her friend Mr. Newman