 necessary, but not as
agreeable. »Did you give him a message to me?« she asked.
    »It was not exactly a message - I asked him to render me a service.«
    »The service was to sing your praises, was it not?« And she accompanied this
question with a little smile, as if to make it easier to herself.
    »Yes, that is what it really amounts to,« said Newman. »Did he sing my
praises?«
    »He spoke very well of you. But when I know that it was by your special
request, of course I must take his eulogy with a grain of salt.«
    »Oh, that makes no difference,« said Newman. »Your brother would not have
spoken well of me unless he believed what he was saying. He is too honest for
that.«
    »Are you very deep?« said Madame de Cintré. »Are you trying to please me by
praising my brother? I confess it is a good way.«
    »For me, any way that succeeds will be good. I will praise your brother all
day, if that will help me. He is a noble little fellow. He has made me feel, in
promising to do what he can to help me, that I can depend upon him.«
    »Don't make too much of that,« said Madame de Cintré. »He can help you very
little.«
    »Of course I must work my way myself. I know that very well; I only want a
chance to. In consenting to see me, after what he told you, you almost seem to
be giving me a chance.«
    »I am seeing you,« said Madame de Cintré, slowly and gravely, »because I
promised my brother I would.«
    »Blessings on your brother's head!« cried Newman. »What I told him last
evening was this: that I admired you more than any woman I had ever seen, and
that I should like immensely to make you my wife.« He uttered these words with
great directness and firmness, and without any sense of confusion. He was full
of his idea, he had completely mastered it, and he seemed to look down on Madame
de Cintré, with all her gathered elegance, from the height of his bracing good
conscience. It is probable that this particular tone and manner were the very
best he could have hit upon. Yet the light, just visibly forced smile, with
which his companion had listened to him died away, and
