Newman looked from Tristram to his wife with a certain mistrust in each direction.  “Do you really mean,” he asked of Mrs. Tristram, “that your friend is being forced into an unhappy marriage?”

“I think it extremely probable.  Those people are very capable of that sort of thing.”

“It is like something in a play,” said Newman; “that dark old house over there looks as if wicked things had been done in it, and might be done again.”

“They have a still darker old house in the country Madame de Cintre tells me, and there, during the summer this scheme must have been hatched.”

“Must have been; mind that!” said Tristram.

“After all,” suggested Newman, after a silence, “she may be in trouble about something else.”

“If it is something else, then it is something worse,” said Mrs. Tristram, with rich decision.

Newman was silent a while, and seemed lost in meditation.  “Is it possible,” he asked at last, “that they do that sort of thing over here? that helpless women are bullied into marrying men they hate?”

“Helpless women, all over the world, have a hard time of it,” said Mrs. Tristram.  “There is plenty of bullying everywhere.”

“A great deal of that kind of thing goes on in New York,” said Tristram.  “Girls are bullied or coaxed or bribed, or all three together, into marrying nasty fellows.  There is no end of that always going on in the Fifth Avenue, and other bad things besides.  The Mysteries of the Fifth Avenue!  Some one ought to show them up.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Newman, very gravely.  “I don’t believe that, in America, girls are ever subjected to compulsion.  I don’t believe there have been a dozen cases of it since the country began.”

“Listen to the voice of the spread eagle!” cried Tristram.

“The spread eagle ought to use his wings,” said Mrs. Tristram.  “Fly to the rescue of Madame de Cintre!”

“To her rescue?”

“Pounce down, seize her in your talons, and carry her off.  Marry her yourself.”

Newman, for some moments, answered nothing; but presently, “I should suppose she had heard enough of marrying,” he said.  “The kindest way to treat her would be to admire her, and yet never to speak of it.  But that sort of thing is infamous,” he added; “it makes me feel savage to hear of it.”

He heard of it, however, more than once afterward.  Mrs. Tristram again saw Madame de Cintre, and again found her looking very sad.  But on these occasions there had been no tears; her beautiful eyes were clear and still.  “She is cold, calm, and hopeless,” Mrs. Tristram declared, and she added that on her mentioning that her friend Mr. Newman was again in Paris and was faithful in his desire to make Madame de Cintre’s acquaintance, this lovely woman had found a smile in her despair, and declared that she was sorry to have missed his visit in the spring and that she hoped he had not lost courage.  “I told her something about you,” said Mrs. Tristram.