Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/217

THE AMERICAN "Do you hear that, Valentin?" said his mother. "You exist for the amusement of Mr. Newman."

"Perhaps we shall all come to that!" Valentin exclaimed.

"You must see my other son," she pursued. "He's much better than this one. But he 'll not amuse you."

"I don't know—I don't know!" Valentin thoughtfully objected. "But we shall very soon see. Here comes monsieur mon frère." The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped forward and whose face Newman remembered as that of the author of his discomfiture the first time of his calling. Valentin went to meet his brother, looked at him a moment and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to their guest. "This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman," he said very blandly. "You must know him if you can."

"I'm delighted to know Mr. Newman," said the Marquis with an unaccompanied salutation.

"He's the old woman at second-hand," Newman reflected with the sense of having his health drunk from an empty glass. And this was the starting-point of a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late head of this noble family had been a very amiable foreigner with an inclination to take life easily and a sense that it was difficult for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so. But if he had found small comfort in his wife he had found much in his two younger children, who were after his own heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born. 187