“I hope not,” said Newman.  “I have something particular to say to you.  Have you seen your brother?”

“Yes, I saw him an hour ago.”

“Did he tell you that he had seen me last night?”

“He said so.”

“And did he tell you what we had talked about?”

Madame de Cintre hesitated a moment.  As Newman asked these questions she had grown a little pale, as if she regarded what was coming as necessary, but not as agreeable.  “Did you give him a message to me?” she asked.

“It was not exactly a message—­I asked him to render me a service.”

“The service was to sing your praises, was it not?” And she accompanied this question with a little smile, as if to make it easier to herself.

“Yes, that is what it really amounts to,” said Newman.  “Did he sing my praises?”

“He spoke very well of you.  But when I know that it was by your special request, of course I must take his eulogy with a grain of salt.”

“Oh, that makes no difference,” said Newman.  “Your brother would not have spoken well of me unless he believed what he was saying.  He is too honest for that.”

“Are you very deep?” said Madame de Cintre.  “Are you trying to please me by praising my brother?  I confess it is a good way.”

“For me, any way that succeeds will be good.  I will praise your brother all day, if that will help me.  He is a noble little fellow.  He has made me feel, in promising to do what he can to help me, that I can depend upon him.”

“Don’t make too much of that,” said Madame de Cintre.  “He can help you very little.”

“Of course I must work my way myself.  I know that very well; I only want a chance to.  In consenting to see me, after what he told you, you almost seem to be giving me a chance.”

“I am seeing you,” said Madame de Cintre, slowly and gravely, “because I promised my brother I would.”

“Blessings on your brother’s head!” cried Newman.  “What I told him last evening was this:  that I admired you more than any woman I had ever seen, and that I should like immensely to make you my wife.”  He uttered these words with great directness and firmness, and without any sense of confusion.  He was full of his idea, he had completely mastered it, and he seemed to look down on Madame de Cintre, with all her gathered elegance, from the height of his bracing good conscience.  It is probable that this particular tone and manner were the very best he could have hit upon.  Yet the light, just visibly forced smile with which his companion had listened to him died away, and she sat looking at him with her lips parted and her face as solemn as a tragic mask.  There was evidently something very painful to her in the scene to which he was subjecting her, and yet her impatience of it found no angry voice.  Newman wondered whether he was hurting her; he could not imagine why the liberal devotion he meant to express should be disagreeable.