and allowing it, in their select circle, but a limited resonance; and it pleased him to think that if he were to take the trouble he might, as he phrased it, break all the windows.  No man likes being repudiated, and yet Newman, if he was not flattered, was not exactly offended.  He had not this good excuse for his somewhat aggressive impulse to promulgate his felicity; his sentiment was of another quality.  He wanted for once to make the heads of the house of Bellegarde feel him; he knew not when he should have another chance.  He had had for the past six months a sense of the old lady and her son looking straight over his head, and he was now resolved that they should toe a mark which he would give himself the satisfaction of drawing.

“It is like seeing a bottle emptied when the wine is poured too slowly,” he said to Mrs. Tristram.  “They make me want to joggle their elbows and force them to spill their wine.”

To this Mrs. Tristram answered that he had better leave them alone and let them do things in their own way.  “You must make allowances for them,” she said.  “It is natural enough that they should hang fire a little.  They thought they accepted you when you made your application; but they are not people of imagination, they could not project themselves into the future, and now they will have to begin again.  But they are people of honor, and they will do whatever is necessary.”

Newman spent a few moments in narrow-eyed meditation.  “I am not hard on them,” he presently said, “and to prove it I will invite them all to a festival.”

“To a festival?”

“You have been laughing at my great gilded rooms all winter; I will show you that they are good for something.  I will give a party.  What is the grandest thing one can do here?  I will hire all the great singers from the opera, and all the first people from the Theatre Francais, and I will give an entertainment.”

“And whom will you invite?”

“You, first of all.  And then the old lady and her son.  And then every one among her friends whom I have met at her house or elsewhere, every one who has shown me the minimum of politeness, every duke of them and his wife.  And then all my friends, without exception:  Miss Kitty Upjohn, Miss Dora Finch, General Packard, C. P Hatch, and all the rest.  And every one shall know what it is about, that is, to celebrate my engagement to the Countess de Cintre.  What do you think of the idea?”

“I think it is odious!” said Mrs. Tristram.  And then in a moment:  “I think it is delicious!”

The very next evening Newman repaired to Madame de Bellegarde’s salon. where he found her surrounded by her children, and invited her to honor his poor dwelling by her presence on a certain evening a fortnight distant.

The marquise stared a moment.  “My dear sir,” she cried, “what do you want to do to me?”

“To make you acquainted with a few people, and then to place you in a very easy chair and ask you to listen to Madame Frezzolini’s singing.”