hich 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 assent, 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 fellowship
they were destined to understand each other. Only, if there was anything
to laugh at, he wished to have a glimpse of it too.

"To begin with," said the young man, as he extended his hand, "have I
come too late?"

"Too late for what?" asked Newman.

"To smoke a cigar with you."

"You would have to come early to do that," said Newman. "I don't smoke."

"Ah, you are a strong man!"

"But I keep cigars," Newman added. "Sit down."

"Surely, I may not smoke here," said M. de Bellegarde.

"What is the matter? Is the room too small?"

"It is too large. It is like smoking in a ball-room, or a church."

"That is what you were laughing at just now?" Newman asked; "the size of
my room?"

"It is not size only," repl