its being for the Pope; about the other man having said something against the Pope’s morals.  They always do that, you know.  They put it on the Pope because Bellegarde was once in the Zouaves.  But it was about her morals—­she was the Pope!” Lord Deepmere pursued, directing an eye illumined by this pleasantry toward Mademoiselle Nioche, who was bending gracefully over her lap-dog, apparently absorbed in conversation with it.  “I dare say you think it rather odd that I should—­a—­keep up the acquaintance,” the young man resumed.  “But she couldn’t help it, you know, and Bellegarde was only my twentieth cousin.  I dare say you think it’s rather cheeky, my showing with her in Hyde Park.  But you see she isn’t known yet, and she’s in such very good form”—­And Lord Deepmere’s conclusion was lost in the attesting glance which he again directed toward the young lady.

Newman turned away; he was having more of her than he relished.  M. Nioche had stepped aside on his daughter’s approach, and he stood there, within a very small compass, looking down hard at the ground.  It had never yet, as between him and Newman, been so apposite to place on record the fact that he had not forgiven his daughter.  As Newman was moving away he looked up and drew near to him, and Newman, seeing the old man had something particular to say, bent his head for an instant.

“You will see it some day in the papers,"’ murmured M. Nioche.

Our hero departed to hide his smile, and to this day, though the newspapers form his principal reading, his eyes have not been arrested by any paragraph forming a sequel to this announcement.

CHAPTER XXVI

In that uninitiated observation of the great spectacle of English life upon which I have touched, it might be supposed that Newman passed a great many dull days.  But the dullness of his days pleased him; his melancholy, which was settling into a secondary stage, like a healing wound, had in it a certain acrid, palatable sweetness.  He had company in his thoughts, and for the present he wanted no other.  He had no desire to make acquaintances, and he left untouched a couple of notes of introduction which had been sent him by Tom Tristram.  He thought a great deal of Madame de Cintre—­sometimes with a dogged tranquillity which might have seemed, for a quarter of an hour at a time, a near neighbor to forgetfulness.  He lived over again the happiest hours he had known—­that silver chain of numbered days in which his afternoon visits, tending sensibly to the ideal result, had subtilized his good humor to a sort of spiritual intoxication.  He came back to reality, after such reveries, with a somewhat muffled shock; he had begun to feel the need of accepting the unchangeable.  At other times the reality became an infamy again and the unchangeable an imposture, and he gave himself up to his angry restlessness till he was weary.  But on the whole