Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/526

THE AMERICAN not worth while, on such a showing, to have pulled us up in the street like a pair of pickpockets."

But the Marquis thought he could surpass this. "Your paper's of course the crudest of forgeries," he said to Newman.

Newman shook his head all amusedly. "M. de Bellegarde, your mother does better. She has done better all along, from the first of my knowing you. You're a mighty plucky woman, madam," he continued. "It's a great pity you've made me your enemy. I should have been one of your greatest admirers."

"Mon pauvre ami," she proceeded to her son, and as if she had not heard these words, "you must take me immediately to my carriage."

Newman stepped back and let them leave him; he watched them a moment and saw Madame Urbain, with her little girl, wander out of a by-path to meet them. The Marquise stooped and kissed her grandchild. "Damn it, she is plucky!" he sighed; and he walked home with a sense of having been almost worsted. She was so quite heroically impenetrable. But on reflexion he decided that what he had witnessed was no real sense of security, still less a real innocence. It was only a very superior style of brazen assurance, of what M. Nioche called l'usage du monde and Mrs. Tristram called the grand manner. "Wait till she has seen how he puts it!" he said to himself; and he concluded that he should hear from her soon.

He heard sooner than he expected. The next morning, before midday, when he was about to give orders for his breakfast to be served, M. de 496