THE AMERICAN
"But I guess it's a proof of power," Newman reasoned, "to be so happy without doing anything."
"Ah, but I don't think Valentin's really so happy. He's intelligent, generous, brave—but what is there to show for it? To me there's something sad in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him. I don't know why, but it seems to come to me that he may have some great trouble—perhaps a really unhappy end."
"Oh, leave him to me," Newman cheerfully returned. "I guess I can keep him all right."
One evening, however, in spite of such passages as these, the conversation in Madame de Bellegarde's own apartment had flagged most sensibly. The Marquis walked up and down in silence, like a sentinel at the door of some menaced citadel of the proprieties; his mother sat staring at the fire; his wife worked at an enormous band of tapestry. Usually there were three or four visitors, but on this occasion a violent storm sufficiently accounted for the absence even of the most assiduous. In the long silences the howling of the wind and the beating of the rain were distinctly audible. Newman sat perfectly still, watching the clock, determined to stay till the stroke of eleven and not a moment longer. Madame de Cintré had turned her back to the circle and had been standing for some time within the uplifted curtain of a window, her forehead against the pane and her eyes reaching out to the deluged darkness. Suddenly she turned round to her sister-in-law. "For heaven's sake," she said with peculiar eagerness, "go to the piano and play something."
260
