“Ah, what a horror!  I won’t be taken in that way; I must be kept apart,” cried Madame de Bellegarde.  “Mr. Newman is much better; he knows how to choose.  Oh, he chooses as if he were threading a needle.  He prefers Madame de Cintre to any conceivable creature or thing.”

“Well, you can’t help my being her cousin,” said Lord Deepmere to Newman, with candid hilarity.

“Oh, no, I can’t help that,” said Newman, laughing back; “neither can she!”

“And you can’t help my dancing with her,” said Lord Deepmere, with sturdy simplicity.

“I could prevent that only by dancing with her myself,” said Newman.  “But unfortunately I don’t know how to dance.”

“Oh, you may dance without knowing how; may you not, milord?” said Madame de Bellegarde.  But to this Lord Deepmere replied that a fellow ought to know how to dance if he didn’t want to make an ass of himself; and at this moment Urbain de Bellegarde joined the group, slow-stepping and with his hands behind him.

“This is a very splendid entertainment,” said Newman, cheerfully.  “The old house looks very bright.”

“If you are pleased, we are content,” said the marquis, lifting his shoulders and bending them forward.

“Oh, I suspect every one is pleased,” said Newman.  “How can they help being pleased when the first thing they see as they come in is your sister, standing there as beautiful as an angel?”

“Yes, she is very beautiful,” rejoined the marquis, solemnly.  “But that is not so great a source of satisfaction to other people, naturally, as to you.”

“Yes, I am satisfied, marquis, I am satisfied,” said Newman, with his protracted enunciation.  “And now tell me,” he added, looking round, “who some of your friends are.”

M. de Bellegarde looked about him in silence, with his head bent and his hand raised to his lower lip, which he slowly rubbed.  A stream of people had been pouring into the salon in which Newman stood with his host, the rooms were filling up and the spectacle had become brilliant.  It borrowed its splendor chiefly from the shining shoulders and profuse jewels of the women, and from the voluminous elegance of their dresses.  There were no uniforms, as Madame de Bellegarde’s door was inexorably closed against the myrmidons of the upstart power which then ruled the fortunes of France, and the great company of smiling and chattering faces was not graced by any very frequent suggestions of harmonious beauty.  It is a pity, nevertheless, that Newman had not been a physiognomist, for a great many of the faces were irregularly agreeable, expressive, and suggestive.  If the occasion had been different they would hardly have pleased him; he would have thought the women not pretty enough and the men too smirking; but he was now in a humor to receive none but agreeable impressions, and he looked no more narrowly than to perceive that every one was brilliant, and to feel that the sun of their brilliancy was a part of his credit.  “I will present you to some people,” said M. de Bellegarde after a while.  “I will make a point of it, in fact.  You will allow me?”