M. Nioche stood staring, with a fallen jaw, not daring to put out his hand. The lady, who sat facing him, turned round in her place and glanced upward with a spirited toss of her head, displaying the agreeable features of his daughter. She looked at Newman sharply, to see how he was looking at her, then—I don’t know what she discovered—she said graciously, “How d’ ye do, monsieur? won’t you come into our little corner?”
“Did you come—did you come after me?” asked M. Nioche very softly.
“I went to your house to see what had become of you. I thought you might be sick,” said Newman.
“It is very good of you, as always,” said the old man. “No, I am not well. Yes, I am seek.”
“Ask monsieur to sit down,” said Mademoiselle Nioche. “Garçon, bring a chair.”
“Will you do us the honor to seat?” said M. Nioche, timorously, and with a double foreignness of accent.
Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took a chair at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his left and her father on the other side. “You will take something, of course,” said Miss Noémie, who was sipping a glass of madeira. Newman said that he believed not, and then she turned to her papa with a smile. “What an honor, eh? he has come only for us.” M. Nioche drained his pungent glass at a long draught, and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in consequence. “But you didn’t come for me, eh?” Mademoiselle Noémie went on. “You didn’t expect to find me here?”
Newman observed the change in her appearance. She was very elegant and prettier than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was noticeable that, to the eye, she had only gained in respectability. She looked “lady-like.” She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her expensively unobtrusive toilet with a grace that might have come from years of practice. Her present self-possession and aplomb struck Newman as really infernal, and he inclined to agree with Valentin de Bellegarde that the young lady was very remarkable. “No, to tell the truth, I didn’t come for you,” he said, “and I didn’t expect to find you. I was told,” he added in a moment “that you had left your father.”
“Quelle horreur!” cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile. “Does one leave one’s father? You have the proof of the contrary.”
“Yes, convincing proof,” said Newman glancing at M. Nioche. The old man caught his glance obliquely, with his faded, deprecating eye, and then, lifting his empty glass, pretended to drink again.