“Other reasons were discussed,” said the marquis, without looking at Valentin, but with an audible tremor in his voice; “some of them possibly were better.  We are conservative, Mr. Newman, but we are not also bigots.  We judged the matter liberally.  We have no doubt that everything will be comfortable.”

Newman had stood listening to these remarks with his arms folded and his eyes fastened upon M. de Bellegarde, “Comfortable?” he said, with a sort of grim flatness of intonation.  “Why shouldn’t we be comfortable?  If you are not, it will be your own fault; I have everything to make me so.”

“My brother means that with the lapse of time you may get used to the change”—­and Valentin paused, to light another cigarette.

“What change?” asked Newman in the same tone.

“Urbain,” said Valentin, very gravely, “I am afraid that Mr. Newman does not quite realize the change.  We ought to insist upon that.”

“My brother goes too far,” said M. de Bellegarde.  “It is his fatal want of tact again.  It is my mother’s wish, and mine, that no such allusions should be made.  Pray never make them yourself.  We prefer to assume that the person accepted as the possible husband of my sister is one of ourselves, and that he should have no explanations to make.  With a little discretion on both sides, everything, I think, will be easy.  That is exactly what I wished to say—­that we quite understand what we have undertaken, and that you may depend upon our adhering to our resolution.”

Valentin shook his hands in the air and then buried his face in them.  “I have less tact than I might have, no doubt; but oh, my brother, if you knew what you yourself were saying!” And he went off into a long laugh.

M. de Bellegarde’s face flushed a little, but he held his head higher, as if to repudiate this concession to vulgar perturbability.  “I am sure you understand me,” he said to Newman.

“Oh no, I don’t understand you at all,” said Newman.  “But you needn’t mind that.  I don’t care.  In fact, I think I had better not understand you.  I might not like it.  That wouldn’t suit me at all, you know.  I want to marry your sister, that’s all; to do it as quickly as possible, and to find fault with nothing.  I don’t care how I do it.  I am not marrying you, you know, sir.  I have got my leave, and that is all I want.”

“You had better receive the last word from my mother,” said the marquis.

“Very good; I will go and get it,” said Newman; and he prepared to return to the drawing-room.

M. de Bellegarde made a motion for him to pass first, and when Newman had gone out he shut himself into the room with Valentin.  Newman had been a trifle bewildered by the audacious irony of the younger brother, and he had not needed its aid to point the moral of M. de Bellegarde’s transcendent patronage.  He had wit enough to appreciate the force of that civility which consists in calling your attention to