r;" and this faithful servant dropped another
curtsey and seemed disposed to retire. But she lingered a moment and
gave a timid, joyless smile. Newman was disappointed, and his fingers
stole half shyly half irritably into his waistcoat-pocket. His informant
noticed the movement. "Thank God I am not a Frenchwoman," she said. "If
I were, I would tell you with a brazen simper, old as I am, that if you
please, monsieur, my information is worth something. Let me tell you so
in my own decent English way. It IS worth something."

"How much, please?" said Newman.

"Simply this: a promise not to hint to the countess that I have said
these things."

"If that is all, you have it," said Newman.

"That is all, sir. Thank you, sir. Good day, sir." And having once
more slid down telescope-wise into her scanty petticoats, the old woman
departed. At the same moment Madame de Cintre came in by an opposite
door. She noticed the movement of the other portiere and asked Newman
who had been entertaining him.

"The British female!" said Newman. "An old lady in a black dress and a
cap, who curtsies up and down, and expresses herself ever so well."

"An old lady who curtsies and expresses herself?... Ah, you mean poor
Mrs. Bread. I happen to know that you have made a conquest of her."

"Mrs. Cake, she ought to be called," said Newman. "She is very sweet.
She is a delicious old woman."

Madame de Cintre looked at him a moment. "What can she have said to you?
She is an excellent creature, but we think her rather dismal."

"I suppose," Newman answered presently, "that I like her because she has
lived near you so long. Since your birth, she told me."

"Yes," said Madame de Cintre, simply; "she is very faithful; I can trust
her."

Newman had never made any reflections to this lady upon her mother and
her brother Urbain; had given no hint of the impression they made upon
him. But, as if she had guessed his thoughts, she seemed careful to
avoid all occasion for making him speak of them. She never alluded to
her mother's domestic decrees; she never quoted the opinions of the
marquis. They had talked, however, of Valentin, and she had made no
secret of her extreme affection for her younger brother. Newman listened
sometimes with a certain harmless jealousy; he would have liked to
divert some of her tender allusions to his own credit. Once Madame
de Cintre told him with a little air of triumph about something that
Valentin had done which she