第16章

"She had come to decline my invitation.You triumphed on the spot, making her ask you, at the end of three minutes, to her house.""It was you who triumphed," said Newman."You must not be too hard upon her."Mrs.Tristram stared."What do you mean?""She did not strike me as so proud.I should say she was shy.""You are very discriminating.And what do you think of her face?""It's handsome!" said Newman.

"I should think it was! Of course you will go and see her.""To-morrow!" cried Newman.

"No, not to-morrow; the next day.That will be Sunday; she leaves Paris on Monday.If you don't see her; it will at least be a beginning."And she gave him Madame de Cintre's address.

He walked across the Seine, late in the summer afternoon, and made his way through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St.Germain whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios.

Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to live;his ideal of grandeur was a splendid facade diffusing its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality.

The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open in answer to his ring.

It admitted him into a wide, graveled court, surrounded on three sides with closed windows, and with a doorway facing the street, approached by three steps and surmounted by a tin canopy.

The place was all in the shade; it answered to Newman's conception of a convent.The portress could not tell him whether Madame de Cintre was visible; he would please to apply at the farther door.

He crossed the court; a gentleman was sitting, bareheaded, on the steps of the portico, playing with a beautiful pointer.

He rose as Newman approached, and, as he laid his hand upon the bell, said with a smile, in English, that he was afraid Newman would be kept waiting; the servants were scattered, he himself had been ringing, he didn't know what the deuce was in them.

He was a young man, his English was excellent, and his smile very frank.Newman pronounced the name of Madame de Cintre.

"I think," said the young man, "that my sister is visible.

Come in, and if you will give me your card I will carry it to her myself."Newman had been accompanied on his present errand by a slight sentiment, I will not say of defiance--a readiness for aggression or defense, as they might prove needful--but of reflection, good-humored suspicion.

He took from his pocket, while he stood on the portico, a card upon which, under his name, he had written the words "San Francisco,"and while he presented it he looked warily at his interlocutor.

His glance was singularly reassuring; he liked the young man's face;it strongly resembled that of Madame de Cintre.He was evidently her brother.The young man, on his side, had made a rapid inspection of Newman's person.He had taken the card and was about to enter the house with it when another figure appeared on the threshold--an older man, of a fine presence, wearing evening dress.

He looked hard at Newman, and Newman looked at him."Madame de Cintre,"the younger man repeated, as an introduction of the visitor.

The other took the card from his hand, read it in a rapid glance, looked again at Newman from head to foot, hesitated a moment, and then said, gravely but urbanely, "Madame de Cintre is not at home."The younger man made a gesture, and then, turning to Newman, "I am very sorry, sir," he said.

Newman gave him a friendly nod, to show that he bore him no malice, and retraced his steps.At the porter's lodge he stopped;the two men were still standing on the portico.

"Who is the gentleman with the dog?" he asked of the old woman who reappeared.He had begun to learn French.

"That is Monsieur le Comte."

"And the other?"

"That is Monsieur le Marquis."

"A marquis?" said Christopher in English, which the old woman fortunately did not understand."Oh, then he's not the butler!"