But even without the aid of Tom Tristram’s conversational felicities, Newman would have begun to think of the Bellegardes again.  He could cease to think of them only when he ceased to think of his loss and privation, and the days had as yet but scantily lightened the weight of this incommodity.  In vain Mrs. Tristram begged him to cheer up; she assured him that the sight of his countenance made her miserable.

“How can I help it?” he demanded with a trembling voice.  “I feel like a widower—­and a widower who has not even the consolation of going to stand beside the grave of his wife—­who has not the right to wear so much mourning as a weed on his hat.  I feel,” he added in a moment “as if my wife had been murdered and her assassins were still at large.”

Mrs. Tristram made no immediate rejoinder, but at last she said, with a smile which, in so far as it was a forced one, was less successfully simulated than such smiles, on her lips, usually were; “Are you very sure that you would have been happy?”

Newman stared a moment, and then shook his head.  “That’s weak,” he said; “that won’t do.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Tristram with a more triumphant bravery, “I don’t believe you would have been happy.”

Newman gave a little laugh.  “Say I should have been miserable, then; it’s a misery I should have preferred to any happiness.”

Mrs. Tristram began to muse.  “I should have been curious to see; it would have been very strange.”

“Was it from curiosity that you urged me to try and marry her?”

“A little,” said Mrs. Tristram, growing still more audacious.  Newman gave her the one angry look he had been destined ever to give her, turned away and took up his hat.  She watched him a moment, and then she said, “That sounds very cruel, but it is less so than it sounds.  Curiosity has a share in almost everything I do.  I wanted very much to see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place; second, what would happen if it should take place.”

“So you didn’t believe,” said Newman, resentfully.

“Yes, I believed—­I believed that it would take place, and that you would be happy.  Otherwise I should have been, among my speculations, a very heartless creature.  But,” she continued, laying her hand upon Newman’s arm and hazarding a grave smile, “it was the highest flight ever taken by a tolerably bold imagination!”

Shortly after this she recommended him to leave Paris and travel for three months.  Change of scene would do him good, and he would forget his misfortune sooner in absence from the objects which had witnessed it.  “I really feel,” Newman rejoined, “as if to leave you, at least, would do me good—­and cost me very little effort.  You are growing cynical, you shock me and pain me.”

“Very good,” said Mrs. Tristram, good-naturedly or cynically, as may be thought most probable.  “I shall certainly see you again.”