Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/444

THE AMERICAN at that villainous ball of hers—I liked it at the time, but the very thought of it now is a bath of fire!—tried to push him on to make up to you."

"Who told you this?" she asked with her strange, stricken mildness.

"Not Valentin. I observed it. I guessed it. I did n't know at the time that I was observing it, but it stuck in my memory. And afterwards, you recollect, I saw Lord Deepmere with you in the conservatory. You said then that you would tell me at another time what he had said to you."

"That was before—before this," she immediately pleaded.

"It does n't matter," said Newman; "and, besides, I think I know. He's an honest little Englishman. He came and told you what your mother was up to—that she wanted him to supplant me; not being a commercial person. If he would make you an offer she would undertake to bring you over and give me the slip—getting rid of me easily, or at least decently, somehow. Lord Deepmere is n't remarkably bright, so she had to spell it out to him. He said he admired you no end, and that he wanted you to know it; but he did n't like being mixed up with that sort of treachery, and he came to you and told tales. That was about the size of it, was n't it? And then you said you were perfectly happy."

"I don't see why we should talk of Lord Deepmere," she returned. "It was n't for that you came here; and about my mother it does n't matter what you suspect and what you know. When once my 414