pe I know my duty too well to go
panting and coughing about the house. But I am an old woman, sir, and it
is as an old woman that I venture to speak to you."

"Oh, speak out," said Newman, curiously. "You needn't be afraid of me."

"Yes, sir. I think you are kind. I have seen you before."

"On the stairs, you mean?"

"Yes, sir. When you have been coming to see the countess. I have taken
the liberty of noticing that you come often."

"Oh yes; I come very often," said Newman, laughing. "You need not have
been wide-awake to notice that."

"I have noticed it with pleasure, sir," said the ancient tire-woman,
gravely. And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of
face. The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit
of decent self-effacement and knowledge of her "own place." But there
mingled with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a
sense, probably, of Newman's unprecedented approachableness, and, beyond
this, a vague indifference to the old proprieties; as if my lady's own
woman had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had taken another
person, she had a slight reversionary property in herself.

"You take a great interest in the family?" said Newman.

"A deep interest, sir. Especially in the countess."

"I am glad of that," said Newman. And in a moment he added, smiling, "So
do I!"

"So I suppose, sir. We can't help noticing these things and having our
ideas; can we, sir?"

"You mean as a servant?" said Newman.

"Ah, there it is, sir. I am afraid that when I let my thoughts meddle
with such matters I am no longer a servant. But I am so devoted to the
countess; if she were my own child I couldn't love her more. That is how
I come to be so bold, sir. They say you want to marry her."

Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not
a gossip, but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet. "It is
quite true," he said. "I want to marry Madame de Cintre."

"And to take her away to America?"

"I will take her wherever she wants to go."

"The farther away the better, sir!" exclaimed the old woman, with sudden
intensity. But she checked herself, and, taking up a paper-weight in
mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron. "I don't mean anything
against the house or the family, sir. But I think a great change would
do the poor countess good. It is very sad here."

"Yes, it's not very lively," said Newman. "But Madame de Ci