“What can he do?” asked Newman.

“Nothing.  Yet he is very clever.”

“It is a proof of cleverness,” said Newman, “to be happy without doing anything.”

“I don’t think Valentin is happy, in reality.  He is clever, generous, brave; but what is there to show for it?  To me there is something sad in his life, and sometimes I have a sort of foreboding about him.  I don’t know why, but I fancy he will have some great trouble—­perhaps an unhappy end.”

“Oh, leave him to me,” said Newman, jovially.  “I will watch over him and keep harm away.”

One evening, in Madame de Bellegarde’s salon, the conversation had flagged most sensibly.  The marquis walked up and down in silence, like a sentinel at the door of some smooth-fronted citadel of the proprieties; his mother sat staring at the fire; young Madame de Bellegarde 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 of even the most devoted habitues.  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, but not a moment longer.  Madame de Cintre had turned her back to the circle, and had been standing for some time within the uplifted curtain of a window, with her forehead against the pane, gazing out into the deluged darkness.  Suddenly she turned round toward her sister-in-law.

“For Heaven’s sake,” she said, with peculiar eagerness, “go to the piano and play something.”

Madame de Bellegarde held up her tapestry and pointed to a little white flower.  “Don’t ask me to leave this.  I am in the midst of a masterpiece.  My flower is going to smell very sweet; I am putting in the smell with this gold-colored silk.  I am holding my breath; I can’t leave off.  Play something yourself.”

“It is absurd for me to play when you are present,” said Madame de Cintre.  But the next moment she went to the piano and began to strike the keys with vehemence.  She played for some time, rapidly and brilliantly; when she stopped, Newman went to the piano and asked her to begin again.  She shook her head, and, on his insisting, she said, “I have not been playing for you; I have been playing for myself.”  She went back to the window again and looked out, and shortly afterwards left the room.  When Newman took leave, Urbain de Bellegarde accompanied him, as he always did, just three steps down the staircase.  At the bottom stood a servant with his overcoat.  He had just put it on when he saw Madame de Cintre coming towards him across the vestibule.

“Shall you be at home on Friday?” Newman asked.

She looked at him a moment before answering his question.  “You don’t like my mother and my brother,” she said.

He hesitated a moment, and then he said softly, “No.”