Mrs. Tristram kissed her. Newman expressed his thanks, and she took her leave. Her hostess went with her to the door, and left Newman alone a moment. Presently she returned, rubbing her hands. “It was a fortunate chance,” she said. “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 Cintré’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 façade 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, gravelled 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 Cintré 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 Cintré.