e
park, where my husband is to bring her to us. Follow me now; just within
the gates I shall get out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in some
quiet corner and I will bring them near you. There's devotion for you!
Le reste vous regarde."

This proposal seemed to Newman extremely felicitous; it revived his
drooping spirit, and he reflected that Madame Urbain was not such a
goose as she seemed. He promised immediately to overtake her, and the
carriage drove away.

The Parc Monceau is a very pretty piece of landscape-gardening, but
Newman, passing into it, bestowed little attention upon its elegant
vegetation, which was full of the freshness of spring. He found Madame
de Bellegarde promptly, seated in one of the quiet corners of which she
had spoken, while before her, in the alley, her little girl, attended by
the footman and the lap-dog, walked up and down as if she were taking a
lesson in deportment. Newman sat down beside the mamma, and she talked
a great deal, apparently with the design of convincing him that--if
he would only see it--poor dear Claire did not belong to the most
fascinating type of woman. She was too tall and thin, too stiff and
cold; her mouth was too wide and her nose too narrow. She had no dimples
anywhere. And then she was eccentric, eccentric in cold blood; she was
an Anglaise, after all. Newman was very impatient; he was counting the
minutes until his victims should reappear. He sat silent, leaning upon
his cane, looking absently and insensibly at the little marquise. At
length Madame de Bellegarde said she would walk toward the gate of the
park and meet her companions; but before she went she dropped her eyes,
and, after playing a moment with the lace of her sleeve, looked up again
at Newman.

"Do you remember," she asked, "the promise you made me three weeks
ago?" And then, as Newman, vainly consulting his memory, was obliged to
confess that the promise had escaped it, she declared that he had made
her, at the time, a very queer answer--an answer at which, viewing it
in the light of the sequel, she had fair ground for taking offense.
"You promised to take me to Bullier's after your marriage. After your
marriage--you made a great point of that. Three days after that your
marriage was broken off. Do you know, when I heard the news, the
first thing I said to myself? 'Oh heaven, now he won't go with me to
Bullier's!' And I really began to wonder if you had not been expecting
the rupture."

"