ery gently. "I feel none the less sorry
for you, especially as I am at the bottom of your troubles. I have not
forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you. I don't believe that
Madame de Cintre has any intention of marrying Lord Deepmere. It is true
he is not younger than she, as he looks. He is thirty-three years old; I
looked in the Peerage. But no--I can't believe her so horribly, cruelly
false."

"Please say nothing against her," said Newman.

"Poor woman, she IS cruel. But of course you will go after her and you
will plead powerfully. Do you know that as you are now," Mrs. Tristram
pursued, with characteristic audacity of comment, "you are extremely
eloquent, even without speaking? To resist you a woman must have a very
fixed idea in her head. I wish I had done you a wrong, that you might
come to me in that fine fashion! But go to Madame de Cintre at any rate,
and tell her that she is a puzzle even to me. I am very curious to see
how far family discipline will go."

Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees and his
head in his hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper charity with
philosophy and compassion with criticism. At last she inquired, "And
what does the Count Valentin say to it?" Newman started; he had not
thought of Valentin and his errand on the Swiss frontier since the
morning. The reflection made him restless again, and he took his
leave. He went straight to his apartment, where, upon the table of the
vestibule, he found a telegram. It ran (with the date and place) as
follows: "I am seriously ill; please to come to me as soon as possible.
V. B." Newman groaned at this miserable news, and at the necessity of
deferring his journey to the Chateau de Fleurieres. But he wrote to
Madame de Cintre these few lines; they were all he had time for:--

"I don't give you up, and I don't really believe you give me up. I don't
understand it, but we shall clear it up together. I can't follow you
to-day, as I am called to see a friend at a distance who is very ill,
perhaps dying. But I shall come to you as soon as I can leave my friend.
Why shouldn't I say that he is your brother? C. N."

After this he had only time to catch the night express to Geneva.

CHAPTER XIX

Newman possessed a remarkable talent for sitting still when it was
necessary, and he had an opportunity to use it on his journey to
Switzerland. The successive hours of the night brought him no sleep, but
he sat motionl