Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/527

THE AMERICAN 's card was brought him. "She has seen how he puts it and she has passed a bad night," he promptly inferred. He instantly admitted his visitor, who came in with the air of the ambassador of a great powder meeting the delegate of a barbarous tribe whom an absurd accident had enabled for the moment to be abominably annoying. The ambassador, at any rate, had also passed a bad night, and his faultlessly careful array only threw into relief the sick rancour of his eyes and those mottled spots on his fine skin that resembled, to his host's imagination, the hard finger-prints of fear. He stood there a moment, breathing quickly and painfully and shaking his forefinger curtly as Newman pointed to a chair.

"What I've come to say is soon said and can only be said without ceremony."

"I'm good for as much or for as little as you desire."

The Marquis looked round the room and then: "On what terms will you part with what you call your original?"

"Ah, on none!" And while, with his head on one side and his hands behind him, he sounded his visitor's depth of detestation, Newman added: "Certainly that's not worth sitting down about."

M. de Bellegarde went on, however, as without having heard him. "My mother and I, last evening, talked over your story. You'll be surprised to learn that we think your little document is—a—"—and he held back his word a moment—"characteristic."

Newman laughed out as it came. "Of your mother and you, you mean?" 497