Mrs. Bread stared, wondering, with parted lips.  “Is it from the count, sir?” she asked.

“From the count—­from his death-bed,” said Newman.

“I will come, then.  I will be bold, for once, for him.”

She led Newman into the great drawing-room with which he had already made acquaintance, and retired to execute his commands.  Newman waited a long time; at last he was on the point of ringing and repeating his request.  He was looking round him for a bell when the marquis came in with his mother on his arm.  It will be seen that Newman had a logical mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result of Valentin’s dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly wicked.  “There is no mistake about it now,” he said to himself as they advanced.  “They’re a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask.”  Madame de Bellegarde and her son certainly bore in their faces the signs of extreme perturbation; they looked like people who had passed a sleepless night.  Confronted, moreover, with an annoyance which they hoped they had disposed of, it was not natural that they should have any very tender glances to bestow upon Newman.  He stood before them, and such eye-beams as they found available they leveled at him; Newman feeling as if the door of a sepulchre had suddenly been opened, and the damp darkness were being exhaled.

“You see I have come back,” he said.  “I have come to try again.”

“It would be ridiculous,” said M. de Bellegarde, “to pretend that we are glad to see you or that we don’t question the taste of your visit.”

“Oh, don’t talk about taste,” said Newman, with a laugh, “or that will bring us round to yours!  If I consulted my taste I certainly shouldn’t come to see you.  Besides, I will make as short work as you please.  Promise me to raise the blockade—­to set Madame de Cintre at liberty—­and I will retire instantly.”

“We hesitated as to whether we would see you,” said Madame de Bellegarde; “and we were on the point of declining the honor.  But it seemed to me that we should act with civility, as we have always done, and I wished to have the satisfaction of informing you that there are certain weaknesses that people of our way of feeling can be guilty of but once.”

“You may be weak but once, but you will be audacious many times, madam,” Newman answered.  “I didn’t come however, for conversational purposes.  I came to say this, simply:  that if you will write immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage, I will take care of the rest.  You don’t want her to turn nun—­you know more about the horrors of it than I do.  Marrying a commercial person is better than that.  Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you retract and that she may marry me with your blessing, and I will take it to her at the convent and bring her out.  There’s your chance—­I call those easy terms.”

“We look at the matter otherwise, you know.  We call them very hard terms,” said Urbain de Bellegarde.  They had all remained standing rigidly in the middle of the room.  “I think my mother will tell you that she would rather her daughter should become Soeur Catherine than Mrs. Newman.”