with nothing. I don't care how I do it. I am not marrying
you, you know, sir. I have got my leave, and that is all I want."

"You had better receive the last word from my mother," said the marquis.

"Very good; I will go and get it," said Newman; and he prepared to
return to the drawing-room.

M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when Newman
had gone out he shut himself into the room with Valentin. Newman had
been a trifle bewildered by the audacious irony of the younger brother,
and he had not needed its aid to point the moral of M. de Bellegarde's
transcendent patronage. He had wit enough to appreciate the force
of that civility which consists in calling your attention to the
impertinences it spares you. But he had felt warmly the delicate
sympathy with himself that underlay Valentin's fraternal irreverence,
and he was most unwilling that his friend should pay a tax upon it.
He paused a moment in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps,
expecting to hear the resonance of M. de Bellegarde's displeasure; but
he detected only a perfect stillness. The stillness itself seemed a
trifle portentous; he reflected however that he had no right to stand
listening, and he made his way back to the salon. In his absence several
persons had come in. They were scattered about the room in groups,
two or three of them having passed into a small boudoir, next to the
drawing-room, which had now been lighted and opened. Old Madame de
Bellegarde was in her place by the fire, talking to a very old gentleman
in a wig and a profuse white neck cloth of the fashion of 1820. Madame
de Cintre was bending a listening head to the historic confidences of
an old lady who was presumably the wife of the old gentleman in the
neckcloth, an old lady in a red satin dress and an ermine cape, who
wore across her forehead a band with a topaz set in it. Young Madame
de Bellegarde, when Newman came in, left some people among whom she was
sitting, and took the place that she had occupied before dinner. Then
she gave a little push to the puff that stood near her, and by a glance
at Newman seemed to indicate that she had placed it in position for him.
He went and took possession of it; the marquis's wife amused and puzzled
him.

"I know your secret," she said, in her bad but charming English; "you
need make no mystery of it. You wish to marry my sister-in-law. C'est un
beau choix. A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman. You mus