Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/504

THE AMERICAN salon with compassionate glances; then she intimated that she accepted the mission and that its sacred character would sustain her in her rupture with her old dread mistress. On this she curtsied herself away.

She came back the next day with her worldly goods, and her friend, going into his drawing-room, found her on her aged knees before a divan, sewing up a piece of detached fringe. He questioned her as to her leave-taking with her late mistress, and she said it had proved easier than she feared. "I was perfectly civil, sir, but the Lord helped me to remember that a good woman has no call to tremble before a bad one."

"You must have been too lovely," Newman frankly observed. "But does she know you've come to me?"

"She asked me where I was going, and I mentioned your name," Mrs. Bread returned.

"What did she say to that?"

"She looked at me very hard, she turned very red. Then she bade me leave her. I was all ready to go, and I had got the coachman, who's an Englishman, thank goodness, to bring down my poor boxes and to fetch me a cab. But when I went down myself to those terrible great gates I found them closed. My lady had sent orders to the porter not to let me pass, and by the same orders the porter's wife, a dreadful sly old body, had gone out in a cab to fetch home M. de Bellegarde from his club."

Newman's face lighted almost with the candour of childhood. "She is scared! she is scared!"

"I was frightened too, sir," said Mrs. Bread, "but I thank the powers I felt my temper rise. I took it 474