THE AMERICAN
I'm much obliged to you for your curiosity," Newman said—"if I may take it as your advice. I'm glad for your sake at least that I'm likely to prove so amusing."
His friend, who had been staring at the fire a minute, looked up. "It's a pity you don't fully understand me, that you don't know just what I'm doing."
"Oh," laughed Newman, "don't do anything wrong! Leave me to myself rather, or defy me out and out to try it. I would n't lay any load on your conscience."
Valentin sprang up again, evidently quite inflamed. "You 'll never understand—you'll never know; and if you succeed and I turn out to have helped you you 'll never be grateful, not as I shall deserve you should be. You 'll be an excellent fellow always, but you 'll not be grateful. But it does n't matter, for I shall get my own fun out of it." And he broke into an extravagant laugh. "You look worried," he added; "you look almost alarmed."
"It's a pity," said Newman, "that I don't wholly catch on. I shall lose some very good sport."
"I told you, you remember, that we're very strange people," his visitor pursued. "Well, I give you warning again. We're fit for a museum or a Balzac novel. My mother's strange, my brother's strange, and I verily believe I'm stranger than either. You'll even find my sister a little strange. Old trees have crooked branches, old houses have queer cracks, old races have odd secrets. Remember that we're eight hundred years old!"
"Very good," said Newman; "that's the sort of
162
