Newman instantly complied, and M. de Bellegarde stepped forward with his mother.  Then Newman said, “Half an hour hence Madame de Bellegarde will regret that she didn’t learn exactly what I mean.”

The marquise had taken a few steps, but at these words she paused, looking at Newman with eyes like two scintillating globules of ice.  “You are like a peddler with something to sell,” she said, with a little cold laugh which only partially concealed the tremor in her voice.

“Oh, no, not to sell,” Newman rejoined; “I give it to you for nothing.”  And he approached nearer to her, looking her straight in the eyes.  “You killed your husband,” he said, almost in a whisper.  “That is, you tried once and failed, and then, without trying, you succeeded.”

Madame de Bellegarde closed her eyes and gave a little cough, which, as a piece of dissimulation, struck Newman as really heroic.  “Dear mother,” said the marquis, “does this stuff amuse you so much?”

“The rest is more amusing,” said Newman.  “You had better not lose it.”

Madame de Bellegarde opened her eyes; the scintillations had gone out of them; they were fixed and dead.  But she smiled superbly with her narrow little lips, and repeated Newman’s word.  “Amusing?  Have I killed some one else?”

“I don’t count your daughter,” said Newman, “though I might!  Your husband knew what you were doing.  I have a proof of it whose existence you have never suspected.”  And he turned to the marquis, who was terribly white—­whiter than Newman had ever seen any one out of a picture.  “A paper written by the hand, and signed with the name, of Henri-Urbain de Bellegarde.  Written after you, madame, had left him for dead, and while you, sir, had gone—­not very fast—­for the doctor.”

The marquis looked at his mother; she turned away, looking vaguely round her.  “I must sit down,” she said in a low tone, going toward the bench on which Newman had been sitting.

“Couldn’t you have spoken to me alone?” said the marquis to Newman, with a strange look.

“Well, yes, if I could have been sure of speaking to your mother alone, too,” Newman answered.  “But I have had to take you as I could get you.”

Madame de Bellegarde, with a movement very eloquent of what he would have called her “grit,” her steel-cold pluck and her instinctive appeal to her own personal resources, drew her hand out of her son’s arm and went and seated herself upon the bench.  There she remained, with her hands folded in her lap, looking straight at Newman.  The expression of her face was such that he fancied at first that she was smiling; but he went and stood in front of her and saw that her elegant features were distorted by agitation.  He saw, however, equally, that she was resisting her agitation with all the rigor of her inflexible will, and there was nothing like either fear or submission in her stony stare.  She had been startled, but she was not terrified.  Newman