Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/488

THE AMERICAN they ought to, I was very near bringing it out. I thought it my duty to do something with such a proof of what had happened, and yet I was terribly afraid. I did n't know what the Marquis had put there, nor how bad it might be, and there was no one I could trust enough to ask. And it seemed to me a cruel kindness to the person in the world I cared most for, letting her know her father had written her mother down so shamefully; for that's what he did, I suppose. I thought she would rather suffer from her husband than suffer from them. It was for her and for my dear Mr. Valentin I kept quiet. Quiet I call it, yet it was a queer enough quietness. It worried me and changed me altogether. But for others I held my tongue, and no one, to this hour, knows what had passed there between my poor prostrate master and his wife."

"But evidently there were suspicions," Newman urged. "Where did Count Valentin get his ideas?"

"From our little local man—who has yet never been in the house, as you may imagine, since. He was very ill-satisfied and he did n't care who knew it. He had a very good opinion of his own sharpness, as Frenchmen mostly have, and coming to the house, as he did, day after day, he had more ideas—as a consequence—than he had had, before, any call to put about. And indeed the way the poor Marquis went off as soon as his eyes fell on my lady was a most shocking sight for any kind person. The great man from Paris may have known, after he had taken things in, what to think, but he also knew what not to say, and he hushed it up. But for all he could do 458