ore his
eyes. It interposed between all new resolutions and their fulfillment;
it seemed like a stubborn ghost, dumbly entreating to be laid. Till that
was done he should never be able to do anything else.

One day, toward the end of the winter, after a long interval, he
received a letter from Mrs. Tristram, who apparently was animated by a
charitable desire to amuse and distract her correspondent. She gave
him much Paris gossip, talked of General Packard and Miss Kitty Upjohn,
enumerated the new plays at the theatre, and inclosed a note from her
husband, who had gone down to spend a month at Nice. Then came her
signature, and after this her postscript. The latter consisted of these
few lines: "I heard three days since from my friend, the Abbe Aubert,
that Madame de Cintre last week took the veil at the Carmelites. It was
on her twenty-seventh birthday, and she took the name of her, patroness,
St. Veronica. Sister Veronica has a life-time before her!"

This letter came to Newman in the morning; in the evening he started for
Paris. His wound began to ache with its first fierceness, and during his
long bleak journey the thought of Madame de Cintre's "life-time,"
passed within prison walls on whose outer side he might stand, kept him
perpetual company. Now he would fix himself in Paris forever; he would
extort a sort of happiness from the knowledge that if she was not
there, at least the stony sepulchre that held her was. He descended,
unannounced, upon Mrs. Bread, whom he found keeping lonely watch in his
great empty saloons on the Boulevard Haussmann. They were as neat as a
Dutch village, Mrs. Bread's only occupation had been removing individual
dust-particles. She made no complaint, however, of her loneliness, for
in her philosophy a servant was but a mysteriously projected machine,
and it would be as fantastic for a housekeeper to comment upon a
gentleman's absences as for a clock to remark upon not being wound up.
No particular clock, Mrs. Bread supposed, went all the time, and no
particular servant could enjoy all the sunshine diffused by the career
of an exacting master. She ventured, nevertheless, to express a modest
hope that Newman meant to remain a while in Paris. Newman laid his hand
on hers and shook it gently. "I mean to remain forever," he said.

He went after this to see Mrs. Tristram, to whom he had telegraphed, and
who expected him. She looked at him a moment and shook her head. "This
won't do," she sai