“Oh no, I don’t understand you at all,” said Newman. “But you needn’t mind that. I don’t care. In fact, I think I had better not understand you. I might not like it. That wouldn’t suit me at all, you know. I want to marry your sister, that’s all; to do it as quickly as possible, and to find fault with nothing. I don’t care how I do it. I am not marrying you, you know, sir. I have got my leave, and that is all I want.”
“You had better receive the last word from my mother,” said the marquis.
“Very good; I will go and get it,” said Newman; and he prepared to return to the drawing-room.
M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when Newman had gone out he shut himself into the room with Valentin. Newman had been a trifle bewildered by the audacious irony of the younger brother, and he had not needed its aid to point the moral of M. de Bellegarde’s transcendent patronage. He had wit enough to appreciate the force of that civility which consists in calling your attention to the impertinences it spares you. But he had felt warmly the delicate sympathy with himself that underlay Valentin’s fraternal irreverence, and he was most unwilling that his friend should pay a tax upon it. He paused a moment in the corridor, after he had gone a few steps, expecting to hear the resonance of M. de Bellegarde’s displeasure; but he detected only a perfect stillness. The stillness itself seemed a trifle portentous; he reflected however that he had no right to stand listening, and he made his way back to the salon. In his absence several persons had come in. They were scattered about the room in groups, two or three of them having passed into a small boudoir, next to the drawing-room, which had now been lighted and opened. Old Madame de Bellegarde was in her place by the fire, talking to a very old gentleman in a wig and a profuse white neck cloth of the fashion of 1820. Madame de Cintré was bending a listening head to the historic confidences of an old lady who was presumably the wife of the old gentleman in the neckcloth, an old lady in a red satin dress and an ermine cape, who wore across her forehead a band with a topaz set in it. Young Madame de Bellegarde, when Newman came in, left some people among whom she was sitting, and took the place that she had occupied before dinner. Then she gave a little push to the puff that stood near her, and by a glance at Newman seemed to indicate that she had placed it in position for him. He went and took possession of it; the marquis’s wife amused and puzzled him.
“I know your secret,” she said, in her bad but charming English; “you need make no mystery of it. You wish to marry my sister-in-law. C’est un beau choix. A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman. You must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous taper!”
“You have spoken to Madame de Cintré?” said Newman.
“Oh no, not that. You may think it strange, but my sister-in-law and I are not so intimate as that. No; I spoke to my husband and my mother-in-law; I said I was sure we could do what we chose with you.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said Newman, laughing; “but you can’t.”
“I know that very well; I didn’t believe a word of it. But I wanted you to come into the house; I thought we should be friends.”
“I am very sure of it,” said Newman.