 rather, do you the honour to
say: A fiddlestick for your phrases! There are better reasons than that?«
    »Other reasons were discussed,« said the marquis, without looking at
Valentin, but with an audible tremor in his voice; »some of them possibly were
better. We are conservative, Mr. Newman, but we are not also bigots. We judged
the matter liberally. We have no doubt that everything will be comfortable.«
    Newman had stood listening to these remarks with his arms folded and his
eyes fastened upon M. de Bellegarde. »Comfortable?« he said, with a sort of grim
flatness of intonation. »Why shouldn't we be comfortable? If you are not, it
will be your own fault; I have everything to make me so.«
    »My brother means that with the lapse of time you may get used to the
change,« and Valentin paused, to light another cigarette.
    »What change?« asked Newman, in the same tone.
    »Urbain,« said Valentin, very gravely, »I am afraid that Mr. Newman does not
quite realise the change. We ought to insist upon that.«
    »My brother goes too far,« said M. de Bellegarde. »It is his fatal want of
tact again. It is my mother's wish, and mine, that no such allusions should be
made. Pray never make them yourself. We prefer to assume that the person
accepted as the possible husband of my sister is one of ourselves, and that he
should have no explanations to make. With a little discretion on both sides,
everything, I think, will be easy. That is exactly what I wished to say - that
we quite understand what we have undertaken, and that you may depend upon our
adhering to our resolution.«
    Valentin shook his hands in the air and then buried his face in them. »I
have less tact than I might have, no doubt; but oh, my brother, if you knew what
you yourself were saying!« And he went off into a long laugh.
    M. de Bellegarde's face flushed a little, but he held his head higher, as if
to repudiate this concession to vulgar perturbability. »I am sure you understand
me,« he said to Newman.
    »Oh no, I don't understand you at all,« said Newman. »But you needn't mind
that. I don't care. In fact, I think I had better not understand you. I might
not like it
