Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/399

THE AMERICAN if we had spoken before. But really, you see, nothing has yet been done."

"Nothing has yet been done?"—Newman repeated the words as if unconscious of their comical effect. He had lost the sense of what the Marquis was saying; M. de Bellegarde's superior style was a mere humming in his ears. All he understood, in his deep and simple wrath, was that the matter was not a violent joke and that the people before him were perfectly serious. "Do you suppose I can take this from you?" he wonderingly asked. "Do you suppose it can matter to me what you say? Do you suppose I'm an idiot that you can so put off?"

Madame de Bellegarde gave a rattle of her fan in the hollow of her hand. "If you don't take it you can leave it, sir. It matters very little what you do. The simple fact is that my daughter has given you up."

"She does n't mean it," Newman declared after a moment.

"I think I can assure you that she does," the Marquis fluted.

"Poor stricken woman, poor bleeding heart, what damnable thing have you done to her?" Newman demanded.

"Gently, gently!" murmured M. de Bellegarde as he rocked on his neat foundations.

"She told you," his mother said. "I expressed my final wish."

Newman shook his head heavily. "This sort of thing can't be, you know. A man can't be used in this fashion. You not only have no right that is n't 369