Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/520

THE AMERICAN so inconsequent that it meant nothing, Newman quickly felt, if it did n't mean a "lovely" nervousness.

"Oh no, not to sell; I give it to you for nothing." And he had never in his life, no matter under what occasion for it, spoken so completely and so gratefully to the point as now. "You cruelly killed your helpless husband, you know; and I'm in possession of all the facts. That is you did your best, first, and failed; and then succeeded—by which I mean finished him—at a stroke and almost without trying."

The Marquise closed her eyes and gave a small dry cough which, as a piece of dissimulation and of self-possession, seemed to her adversary consummate.

"Dear mother," said Urbain as if she had been moved to hilarity, "does this stuff amuse you so much?"

"The rest is more amusing," Newman went on. "You had better not lose it."

The eyes she fixed on him might well have been, he recognised, those with which, according to Mrs. Bread, she had done her husband to death; and they had somehow no connexion with the stifled shrillness of her spoken retort. "Amusing? Have I killed some one else?"

"I don't count your daughter," said Newman, "though of course I might. Your husband knew what you were doing. I've a proof of it the existence of which you've never suspected." And he turned to the Marquis, whose face was beyond any he had ever seen discomposed, decomposed—what did they call it? "A paper written by the hand, and signed with 490