“How do you mean it won’t do?”
“Why, of course you damn yourself. But I suppose that’s in your programme. You propose to throw mud at us; you believe, you hope, that some of it may stick. We know, of course, it can’t,” explained the marquis in a tone of conscious lucidity; “but you take the chance, and are willing at any rate to show that you yourself have dirty hands.”
“That’s a good comparison; at least half of it is,” said Newman. “I take the chance of something sticking. But as regards my hands, they are clean. I have taken the matter up with my finger-tips.”
M. de Bellegarde looked a moment into his hat. “All our friends are quite with us,” he said. “They would have done exactly as we have done.”
“I shall believe that when I hear them say it. Meanwhile I shall think better of human nature.”
The marquis looked into his hat again. “Madame de Cintré was extremely fond of her father. If she knew of the existence of the few written words of which you propose to make this scandalous use, she would demand of you proudly for his sake to give it up to her, and she would destroy it without reading it.”
“Very possibly,” Newman rejoined. “But she will not know. I was in that convent yesterday and I know what she is doing. Lord deliver us! You can guess whether it made me feel forgiving!”
M. de Bellegarde appeared to have nothing more to suggest; but he continued to stand there, rigid and elegant, as a man who believed that his mere personal presence had an argumentative value. Newman watched him, and, without yielding an inch on the main issue, felt an incongruously good-natured impulse to help him to retreat in good order.
“Your visit’s a failure, you see,” he said. “You offer too little.”
“Propose something yourself,” said the marquis.