se it."

Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out of
them; they were fixed and dead. But she smiled superbly with her narrow
little lips, and repeated Newman's word. "Amusing? Have I killed some
one else?"

"I don't count your daughter," said Newman, "though I might! Your
husband knew what you were doing. I have a proof of it whose existence
you have never suspected." And he turned to the marquis, who was
terribly white--whiter than Newman had ever seen any one out of a
picture. "A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name, of
Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde. Written after you, madame, had left him for
dead, and while you, sir, had gone--not very fast--for the doctor."

The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely round
her. "I must sit down," she said in a low tone, going toward the bench
on which Newman had been sitting.

"Couldn't you have spoken to me alone?" said the marquis to Newman, with
a strange look.

"Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone,
too," Newman answered. "But I have had to take you as I could get you."

Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would
have called her "grit," her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive appeal
to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son's arm and
went and seated herself upon the bench. There she remained, with her
hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman. The expression of
her face was such that he fancied at first that she was smiling; but he
went and stood in front of her and saw that her elegant features were
distorted by agitation. He saw, however, equally, that she was resisting
her agitation with all the rigor of her inflexible will, and there was
nothing like either fear or submission in her stony stare. She had been
startled, but she was not terrified. Newman had an exasperating feeling
that she would get the better of him still; he would not have believed
it possible that he could so utterly fail to be touched by the sight of
a woman (criminal or other) in so tight a place. Madame de Bellegarde
gave a glance at her son which seemed tantamount to an injunction to be
silent and leave her to her own devices. The marquis stood beside her,
with his hands behind him, looking at Newman.

"What paper is this you speak of?" asked the old lady, with an imitation
of tranquillity which would have been applauded in a veteran actress.