One afternoon, on his calling on Madame de Cintre, Newman was requested by the servant to wait a few moments, as his hostess was not at liberty.  He walked about the room a while, taking up her books, smelling her flowers, and looking at her prints and photographs (which he thought prodigiously pretty), and at last he heard the opening of a door to which his back was turned.  On the threshold stood an old woman whom he remembered to have met several times in entering and leaving the house.  She was tall and straight and dressed in black, and she wore a cap which, if Newman had been initiated into such mysteries, would have been a sufficient assurance that she was not a Frenchwoman; a cap of pure British composition.  She had a pale, decent, depressed-looking face, and a clear, dull, English eye.  She looked at Newman a moment, both intently and timidly, and then she dropped a short, straight English curtsey.

“Madame de Cintre begs you will kindly wait,” she said.  “She has just come in; she will soon have finished dressing.”

“Oh, I will wait as long as she wants,” said Newman.  “Pray tell her not to hurry.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the woman, softly; and then, instead of retiring with her message, she advanced into the room.  She looked about her for a moment, and presently went to a table and began to arrange certain books and knick-knacks.  Newman was struck with the high respectability of her appearance; he was afraid to address her as a servant.  She busied herself for some moments with putting the table in order and pulling the curtains straight, while Newman walked slowly to and fro.  He perceived at last from her reflection in the mirror, as he was passing that her hands were idle and that she was looking at him intently.  She evidently wished to say something, and Newman, perceiving it, helped her to begin.

“You are English?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, please,” she answered, quickly and softly; “I was born in Wiltshire.”

“And what do you think of Paris?”

“Oh, I don’t think of Paris, sir,” she said in the same tone.  “It is so long since I have been here.”

“Ah, you have been here very long?”

“It is more than forty years, sir.  I came over with Lady Emmeline.”

“You mean with old Madame de Bellegarde?”

“Yes, sir.  I came with her when she was married.  I was my lady’s own woman.”

“And you have been with her ever since?”

“I have been in the house ever since.  My lady has taken a younger person.  You see I am very old.  I do nothing regular now.  But I keep about.”

“You look very strong and well,” said Newman, observing the erectness of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.

“Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty too well to go panting and coughing about the house.  But I am an old woman, sir, and it is as an old woman that I venture to speak to you.”