Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/487

THE AMERICAN murder case. "And the paper—the paper!" he said from a dry throat. "What was written on it?"

"I can't tell you, sir," Mrs. Bread replied. "I could n't read it. It was French."

"But could no one else read it?"

"I never asked a human creature."

"No one has ever seen it?"

"If you do you 'll be the first."

Newman seized his companion's hand in both his own and pressed it almost with passion. "I thank you as I've never thanked any one for anything. I want to be the first; I want it to be mine as this closed fist is mine. You're the wisest old woman in Europe. And what did you do with the blest thing?" Her information had made him feel extraordinarily strong. "For God's sake, let me have it!"

Mrs. Bread got up with a certain majesty. "It's not so easy as that, sir. When you want great things you must wait for great things."

"But waiting's horrible, you know," he candidly smiled.

"I'm sure I've waited; I've waited these many years," she quavered.

"That's very true. You have waited for me. I won't forget it. And yet how comes it you did n't do as M. de Bellegarde said—show the right people what you had got?"

"To whom should I show it and who were the right people?" she asked with high lucidity. "It was n't easy to know, and many's the night I have lain awake thinking of it. Six months afterwards, when they married Mademoiselle to the last person 457