said.

CHAPTER XVI

The next ten days were the happiest that Newman had ever known. He
saw Madame de Cintre every day, and never saw either old Madame de
Bellegarde or the elder of his prospective brothers-in-law. Madame de
Cintre at last seemed to think it becoming to apologize for their never
being present. "They are much taken up," she said, "with doing the
honors of Paris to Lord Deepmere." There was a smile in her gravity
as she made this declaration, and it deepened as she added, "He is our
seventh cousin, you know, and blood is thicker than water. And then, he
is so interesting!" And with this she laughed.

Newman met young Madame de Bellegarde two or three times, always roaming
about with graceful vagueness, as if in search of an unattainable ideal
of amusement. She always reminded him of a painted perfume-bottle with a
crack in it; but he had grown to have a kindly feeling for her, based
on the fact of her owing conjugal allegiance to Urbain de Bellegarde.
He pitied M. de Bellegarde's wife, especially since she was a silly,
thirstily-smiling little brunette, with a suggestion of an unregulated
heart. The small marquise sometimes looked at him with an intensity
too marked not to be innocent, for coquetry is more finely shaded.
She apparently wanted to ask him something or tell him something; he
wondered what it was. But he was shy of giving her an opportunity,
because, if her communication bore upon the aridity of her matrimonial
lot, he was at a loss to see how he could help her. He had a fancy,
however, of her coming up to him some day and saying (after looking
around behind her) with a little passionate hiss, "I know you detest my
husband; let me have the pleasure of assuring you for once that you
are right. Pity a poor woman who is married to a clock-image in
papier-mache!" Possessing, however, in default of a competent knowledge
of the principles of etiquette, a very downright sense of the "meanness"
of certain actions, it seemed to him to belong to his position to keep
on his guard; he was not going to put it into the power of these people
to say that in their house he had done anything unpleasant. As it was,
Madame de Bellegarde used to give him news of the dress she meant to
wear at his wedding, and which had not yet, in her creative imagination,
in spite of many interviews with the tailor, resolved itself into its
composite totality. "I told you pale blue bows on the sleeves, at the
elbows," sh