The marquise gathered herself together majestically. "This is too
gross!" she cried. "We decline to accept your story, sir--we repudiate
it. Urbain, open the door." She turned away, with an imperious motion
to her son, and passed rapidly down the length of the room. The marquis
went with her and held the door open. Newman was left standing.

He lifted his finger, as a sign to M. de Bellegarde, who closed the
door behind his mother and stood waiting. Newman slowly advanced, more
silent, for the moment, than life. The two men stood face to face. Then
Newman had a singular sensation; he felt his sense of injury almost
brimming over into jocularity. "Come," he said, "you don't treat me
well; at least admit that."

M. de Bellegarde looked at him from head to foot, and then, in the most
delicate, best-bred voice, "I detest you, personally," he said.

"That's the way I feel to you, but for politeness sake I don't say
it," said Newman. "It's singular I should want so much to be your
brother-in-law, but I can't give it up. Let me try once more." And he
paused a moment. "You have a secret--you have a skeleton in the closet."
M. de Bellegarde continued to look at him hard, but Newman could not see
whether his eyes betrayed anything; the look of his eyes was always so
strange. Newman paused again, and then went on. "You and your mother
have committed a crime." At this M. de Bellegarde's eyes certainly did
change; they seemed to flicker, like blown candles. Newman could see
that he was profoundly startled; but there was something admirable in
his self-control.

"Continue," said M. de Bellegarde.

Newman lifted a finger and made it waver a little in the air. "Need I
continue? You are trembling."

"Pray where did you obtain this interesting information?" M. de
Bellegarde asked, very softly.

"I shall be strictly accurate," said Newman. "I won't pretend to know
more than I do. At present that is all I know. You have done something
that you must hide, something that would damn you if it were known,
something that would disgrace the name you are so proud of. I don't know
what it is, but I can find out. Persist in your present course and I
WILL find out. Change it, let your sister go in peace, and I will leave
you alone. It's a bargain?"

The marquis almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up
of the ice in his handsome countenance was an operation that was
necessarily gradual. But Newman's mildly-syllabled argumenta