Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/408

THE AMERICAN very gently. "I feel none the less sorry for you, especially as I'm at the bottom of your troubles. I've not forgotten that I suggested the marriage to you. I don't believe Claire has any intention of consenting to marry Lord Deepmere. It's true he's not younger than she, as he might pass for being. He's thirty-three years old; I looked in the Peerage. But no—I can't believe her so hideously, cruelly false."

"Please say nothing against her!" Newman strangely cried.

"Poor woman," she none the less continued, "she is cruel. But of course you 'll go after her and you 'll plead powerfully. Do you know that as you are now," Mrs. Tristram added with characteristic audacity of comment, "you're extremely eloquent, even without speaking? To resist you a woman must have a very fixed idea or a very bad conscience. I wish I had done you a wrong—that you might come to me and make me so feel it; and feel you, dear man, just you." She looked at him an instant, then had one of her odd little outbreaks. "You're lamentable—you're splendid! Go to Madame de Cintré, at any rate, and tell her that she's a puzzle even to one of the intelligent, like me, who so greatly admires her. I'm very curious to see how far family discipline in a fine case like this does go."

Newman sat a while longer, leaning his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and Mrs. Tristram continued to temper charity with reason and compassion with criticism. At last she inquired: "And what does Count Valentin say to it?" 378