ess," exclaimed Valentin; "but it is not, it
is warmth. It shows she is treating you as an intimate. Now she detests
me, and yet she is always looking at me."

"No wonder I detest you if I am always looking at you!" cried the lady.
"If Mr. Newman does not like my way of shaking hands, I will do it
again."

But this charming privilege was lost upon our hero, who was already
making his way across the room to Madame de Cintre. She looked at him
as she shook hands, but she went on with the story she was telling her
little niece. She had only two or three phrases to add, but they were
apparently of great moment. She deepened her voice, smiling as she did
so, and the little girl gazed at her with round eyes.

"But in the end the young prince married the beautiful Florabella," said
Madame de Cintre, "and carried her off to live with him in the Land of
the Pink Sky. There she was so happy that she forgot all her troubles,
and went out to drive every day of her life in an ivory coach drawn by
five hundred white mice. Poor Florabella," she exclaimed to Newman, "had
suffered terribly."

"She had had nothing to eat for six months," said little Blanche.

"Yes, but when the six months were over, she had a plum-cake as big as
that ottoman," said Madame de Cintre. "That quite set her up again."

"What a checkered career!" said Newman. "Are you very fond of children?"
He was certain that she was, but he wished to make her say it.

"I like to talk with them," she answered; "we can talk with them so much
more seriously than with grown persons. That is great nonsense that I
have been telling Blanche, but it is a great deal more serious than most
of what we say in society."

"I wish you would talk to me, then, as if I were Blanche's age," said
Newman, laughing. "Were you happy at your ball, the other night?"

"Ecstatically!"

"Now you are talking the nonsense that we talk in society," said Newman.
"I don't believe that."

"It was my own fault if I was not happy. The ball was very pretty, and
every one very amiable."

"It was on your conscience," said Newman, "that you had annoyed your
mother and your brother."

Madame de Cintre looked at him a moment without answering. "That is
true," she replied at last. "I had undertaken more than I could carry
out. I have very little courage; I am not a heroine." She said this with
a certain soft emphasis; but then, changing her tone, "I could never
have gone through the sufferings of the