Tristram moralized over Newman's so-called neglect, which was in
reality a most exemplary constancy. Of course she was joking, but
there was always something ironical in her jokes, as there was always
something jocular in her gravity.

"I know no better proof that I have treated you very well," Newman
had said, "than the fact that you make so free with my character.
Familiarity breeds contempt; I have made myself too cheap. If I had a
little proper pride I would stay away a while, and when you asked me to
dinner say I was going to the Princess Borealska's. But I have not any
pride where my pleasure is concerned, and to keep you in the humor to
see me--if you must see me only to call me bad names--I will agree to
anything you choose; I will admit that I am the biggest snob in Paris."
Newman, in fact, had declined an invitation personally given by the
Princess Borealska, an inquiring Polish lady to whom he had been
presented, on the ground that on that particular day he always dined
at Mrs. Tristram's; and it was only a tenderly perverse theory of
his hostess of the Avenue d'Iena that he was faithless to his early
friendships. She needed the theory to explain a certain moral irritation
by which she was often visited; though, if this explanation was unsound,
a deeper analyst than I must give the right one. Having launched our
hero upon the current which was bearing him so rapidly along, she
appeared but half-pleased at its swiftness. She had succeeded too well;
she had played her game too cleverly and she wished to mix up the cards.
Newman had told her, in due season, that her friend was "satisfactory."
The epithet was not romantic, but Mrs. Tristram had no difficulty in
perceiving that, in essentials, the feeling which lay beneath it was.
Indeed, the mild, expansive brevity with which it was uttered, and
a certain look, at once appealing and inscrutable, that issued from
Newman's half-closed eyes as he leaned his head against the back of his
chair, seemed to her the most eloquent attestation of a mature sentiment
that she had ever encountered. Newman was, according to the French
phrase, only abounding in her own sense, but his temperate raptures
exerted a singular effect upon the ardor which she herself had so freely
manifested a few months before. She now seemed inclined to take a purely
critical view of Madame de Cintre, and wished to have it understood that
she did not in the least answer for her being a compendium of