o questions. I will take
her away, and you shall never see me or hear of me again. I will stay in
America if you like. I'll sign a paper promising never to come back to
Europe! All I want is not to lose her!"

Madame de Bellegarde and her son exchanged a glance of lucid irony, and
Urbain said, "My dear sir, what you propose is hardly an improvement. We
have not the slightest objection to seeing you, as an amiable foreigner,
and we have every reason for not wishing to be eternally separated
from my sister. We object to the marriage; and in that way," and M. de
Bellegarde gave a small, thin laugh, "she would be more married than
ever."

"Well, then," said Newman, "where is this place of yours--Fleurieres? I
know it is near some old city on a hill."

"Precisely. Poitiers is on a hill," said Madame de Bellegarde. "I don't
know how old it is. We are not afraid to tell you."

"It is Poitiers, is it? Very good," said Newman. "I shall immediately
follow Madame de Cintre."

"The trains after this hour won't serve you," said Urbain.

"I shall hire a special train!"

"That will be a very silly waste of money," said Madame de Bellegarde.

"It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence," Newman
answered; and clapping his hat on his head, he departed.

He did not immediately start for Fleurieres; he was too stunned and
wounded for consecutive action. He simply walked; he walked straight
before him, following the river, till he got out of the enceinte of
Paris. He had a burning, tingling sense of personal outrage. He had
never in his life received so absolute a check; he had never been pulled
up, or, as he would have said, "let down," so short; and he found the
sensation intolerable; he strode along, tapping the trees and lamp-posts
fiercely with his stick and inwardly raging. To lose Madame de Cintre
after he had taken such jubilant and triumphant possession of her was as
great an affront to his pride as it was an injury to his happiness.
And to lose her by the interference and the dictation of others, by
an impudent old woman and a pretentious fop stepping in with their
"authority"! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful. Upon what he
deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes Newman wasted little
thought; he consigned it, once for all, to eternal perdition. But the
treachery of Madame de Cintre herself amazed and confounded him; there
was a key to the mystery, of course, but he groped for it in