I had got the coachman, who is an
Englishman, to bring down my poor box and to fetch me a cab. But when I
went down myself to the gate I found it closed. My lady had sent orders
to the porter not to let me pass, and by the same orders the porter's
wife--she is a dreadful sly old body--had gone out in a cab to fetch
home M. de Bellegarde from his club."

Newman slapped his knee. "She IS scared! she IS scared!" he cried,
exultantly.

"I was frightened too, sir," said Mrs. Bread, "but I was also mightily
vexed. I took it very high with the porter and asked him by what right
he used violence to an honorable Englishwoman who had lived in the house
for thirty years before he was heard of. Oh, sir, I was very grand, and
I brought the man down. He drew his bolts and let me out, and I promised
the cabman something handsome if he would drive fast. But he was
terribly slow; it seemed as if we should never reach your blessed door.
I am all of a tremble still; it took me five minutes, just now, to
thread my needle."

Newman told her, with a gleeful laugh, that if she chose she might
have a little maid on purpose to thread her needles; and he went away
murmuring to himself again that the old woman WAS scared--she WAS
scared!

He had not shown Mrs. Tristram the little paper that he carried in
his pocket-book, but since his return to Paris he had seen her several
times, and she had told him that he seemed to her to be in a strange
way--an even stranger way than his sad situation made natural. Had his
disappointment gone to his head? He looked like a man who was going to
be ill, and yet she had never seen him more restless and active. One day
he would sit hanging his head and looking as if he were firmly resolved
never to smile again; another he would indulge in laughter that was
almost unseemly and make jokes that were bad even for him. If he was
trying to carry off his sorrow, he at such times really went too far.
She begged him of all things not to be "strange." Feeling in a measure
responsible as she did for the affair which had turned out so ill
for him, she could endure anything but his strangeness. He might be
melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical; he might be cross and
cantankerous with her and ask her why she had ever dared to meddle
with his destiny: to this she would submit; for this she would make
allowances. Only, for Heaven's sake, let him not be incoherent. That
would be extremely unpleasant. It was like pe