“My mother goes to the point, with her usual honesty and intrepidity,” said the marquis, toying with his watch-guard.  “But it is perhaps well to say a little more.  We of course quite repudiate the charge of having broken faith with you.  We left you entirely at liberty to make yourself agreeable to my sister.  We left her quite at liberty to entertain your proposal.  When she accepted you we said nothing.  We therefore quite observed our promise.  It was only at a later stage of the affair, and on quite a different basis, as it were, that we determined to speak.  It would have been better, perhaps, if we had spoken before.  But really, you see, nothing has yet been done.”

“Nothing has yet been done?” Newman repeated the words, unconscious of their comical effect.  He had lost the sense of what the marquis was saying; M. de Bellegarde’s superior style was a mere humming in his ears.  All that he understood, in his deep and simple indignation, was that the matter was not a violent joke, and that the people before him were perfectly serious.  “Do you suppose I can take this?” he asked.  “Do you suppose it can matter to me what you say?  Do you suppose I can seriously listen to you?  You are simply crazy!”

Madame de Bellegarde gave a rap with her fan in the palm of her hand.  “If you don’t take it you can leave it, sir.  It matters very little what you do.  My daughter has given you up.”

“She doesn’t mean it,” Newman declared after a moment.

“I think I can assure you that she does,” said the marquis.

“Poor woman, what damnable thing have you done to her?” cried Newman.

“Gently, gently!” murmured M. de Bellegarde.

“She told you,” said the old lady.  “I commanded her.”

Newman shook his head, heavily.  “This sort of thing can’t be, you know,” he said.  “A man can’t be used in this fashion.  You have got no right; you have got no power.”

“My power,” said Madame de Bellegarde, “is in my children’s obedience.”

“In their fear, your daughter said.  There is something very strange in it.  Why should your daughter be afraid of you?” added Newman, after looking a moment at the old lady.  “There is some foul play.”

The marquise met his gaze without flinching, and as if she did not hear or heed what he said.  “I did my best,” she said, quietly.  “I could endure it no longer.”

“It was a bold experiment!” said the marquis.

Newman felt disposed to walk to him, clutch his neck with his fingers and press his windpipe with his thumb.  “I needn’t tell you how you strike me,” he said; “of course you know that.  But I should think you would be afraid of your friends—­all those people you introduced me to the other night.  There were some very nice people among them; you may depend upon it there were some honest men and women.”

“Our friends approve us,” said M. de Bellegarde, “there is not a family among them that would have acted otherwise.  And however that may be, we take the cue from no one.  The Bellegardes have been used to set the example not to wait for it.”