Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/476

THE AMERICAN you 've your idea, and I 've no will of my own. My will was the will of my children, as I called them; but I 've lost my children now. They're dead and gone—I may say it of both of them; and what should I care for the living? What's any one in the house to me now—what am I to them? My lady objects to me—has objected to me these thirty years. I should have been glad to be something to young Madame Urbain, though I never was nurse to the present Marquis. When he was a baby I was too young; they wouldn't trust me with him. But his wife told her own maid, Mamselle Clarisse, the opinion she had of me. Perhaps you d like to hear it, sir."

"Oh, would n't I?" Newman almost panted.

"She said that if I 'd sit in her children's schoolroom I should do very well for a penwiper! When things have come to that I don't think I need stand on ceremony."

"I never heard of anything so vicious!" Newman rejoicingly declared. "Go on, Mrs. Bread."

Mrs. Bread, however, relapsed again into troubled reserve, and all he could do was to fold his arms and wait. But at last she appeared to have set her memories in order. "It was when the late Marquis was an old man and his eldest son had been two years married. It was when the time came on for marrying Mademoiselle Claire; that's the way they talk of it here, you know, sir—as you might talk of sending a heifer to market. The Marquis's health was bad; he was sadly broken down. My lady had picked out M. de Cintré, for no good reason that I could see. But there are reasons, I very well know, that are 446