THE AMERICAN
still questioned. "She's in the house? She's visible?"
"I don't think she expected you this morning," his venerable friend replied. "She was to leave immediately."
"Where is she going?"
"To Fleurières."
"Away off there? But surely I can see her?"
Mrs. Bread hesitated, but then, clasping together her black-gloved hands, "I 'll take you!" she rather desperately said. And she led the way upstairs. At the top of the staircase, however, she paused and fixed her dry sad eyes on him. "Be very easy with her. Nobody else is." Then she went on to Madame de Cintré's apartment. Newman, perplexed and alarmed, followed her fast. She threw open the door and he pushed back the curtain at the further side of its deep embrasure. In the middle of the room stood Madame de Cintré; her face was flushed and marked and she was dressed for travelling. Behind her, before the fireplace, stood Urbain de Bellegarde and looked at his finger-nails; near the Marquis sat his mother, buried in an armchair and with her eyes immediately fixing themselves on the invader, as he felt them pronounce him. He knew himself, as he entered, in the presence of something evil; he was as startled and pained as he would have been by a threatening cry in the stillness of the night. He walked straight to Madame de Cintré and seized her by the hand.
"What's the matter?" he asked commandingly; "what's happening?"
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