Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/471

THE AMERICAN "That's for me to decide. The Count believed it would, and that's why he told me. Your name was almost the last word he spoke."

This statement produced in her a sharp checked convulsion; she shook her clasped hands slowly up and down. "Pardon me if I take a great liberty. Is it the solemn truth you're speaking? I must ask you that; don't you see that I must, sir?"

"There's no offence. It is the solemn truth; I solemnly swear it. The Count himself would certainly have told me more if he had been able."

"Oh, sir, if he had known more!"

"Don't you suppose he did know?"

"There's no saying what he knew about anything," she almost wailingly conceded. "He was clever to that grand extent. He could make you believe he knew things he did n't, and that he did n't know others he had better not have known."

"I suspect he knew something about his brother that made the Marquis mind his eye!" Newman propounded. "He made the Marquis feel him pretty badly. What he wanted now was to put me in his place; he wanted to give me a chance to make the Marquis feel me."

"Mercy on us," cried the old waiting-woman, "how malicious we all are, to be sure!"

"I don't know," said Newman; "some of us are malicious, certainly. I'm very angry, I'm very sore, and I'm very bitter, but I don't know that I'm malicious. I've been cruelly injured. They've hurt me and I want to hurt them. I don't deny that; on the contrary, I tell you plainly that that's the use I want 441