She began to speak again with a trembling voice.  “I think it would be more respectable if I could—­if I could”—­and her voice trembled to a pause.

“If you could give up this sort of thing altogether?” said Newman kindly, trying to anticipate her meaning, which he supposed might be a wish to retire from service.

“If I could give up everything, sir!  All I should ask is a decent Protestant burial.”

“Burial!” cried Newman, with a burst of laughter.  “Why, to bury you now would be a sad piece of extravagance.  It’s only rascals who have to be buried to get respectable.  Honest folks like you and me can live our time out—­and live together.  Come!  Did you bring your baggage?”

“My box is locked and corded; but I haven’t yet spoken to my lady.”

“Speak to her, then, and have done with it.  I should like to have your chance!” cried Newman.

“I would gladly give it you, sir.  I have passed some weary hours in my lady’s dressing-room; but this will be one of the longest.  She will tax me with ingratitude.”

“Well,” said Newman, “so long as you can tax her with murder—­”

“Oh, sir, I can’t; not I,” sighed Mrs. Bread.

“You don’t mean to say anything about it?  So much the better.  Leave that to me.”

“If she calls me a thankless old woman,” said Mrs. Bread, “I shall have nothing to say.  But it is better so,” she softly added.  “She shall be my lady to the last.  That will be more respectable.”

“And then you will come to me and I shall be your gentleman,” said Newman; “that will be more respectable still!”

Mrs. Bread rose, with lowered eyes, and stood a moment; then, looking up, she rested her eyes upon Newman’s face.  The disordered proprieties were somehow settling to rest.  She looked at Newman so long and so fixedly, with such a dull, intense devotedness, that he himself might have had a pretext for embarrassment.  At last she said gently, “You are not looking well, sir.”

“That’s natural enough,” said Newman.  “I have nothing to feel well about.  To be very indifferent and very fierce, very dull and very jovial, very sick and very lively, all at once,—­why, it rather mixes one up.”

Mrs. Bread gave a noiseless sigh.  “I can tell you something that will make you feel duller still, if you want to feel all one way.  About Madame de Cintre.”

“What can you tell me?” Newman demanded.  “Not that you have seen her?”

She shook her head.  “No, indeed, sir, nor ever shall.  That’s the dullness of it.  Nor my lady.  Nor M. de Bellegarde.”

“You mean that she is kept so close.”

“Close, close,” said Mrs. Bread, very softly.

These words, for an instant, seemed to check the beating of Newman’s heart.  He leaned back in his chair, staring up at the old woman.  “They have tried to see her, and she wouldn’t—­she couldn’t?”

“She refused—­forever!  I had it from my lady’s own maid,” said Mrs. Bread, “who had it from my lady.  To speak of it to such a person my lady must have felt the shock.  Madame de Cintre won’t see them now, and now is her only chance.  A while hence she will have no chance.”