“It is very good of you, as always,” said the old man.  “No, I am not well.  Yes, I am seek.”

“Ask monsieur to sit down,” said Mademoiselle Nioche.  “Garcon, bring a chair.”

“Will you do us the honor to seat?” said M. Nioche, timorously, and with a double foreignness of accent.

Newman said to himself that he had better see the thing out and he took a chair at the end of the table, with Mademoiselle Nioche on his left and her father on the other side.  “You will take something, of course,” said Miss Noemie, who was sipping a glass of madeira.  Newman said that he believed not, and then she turned to her papa with a smile.  “What an honor, eh? he has come only for us.”  M. Nioche drained his pungent glass at a long draught, and looked out from eyes more lachrymose in consequence.  “But you didn’t come for me, eh?” Mademoiselle Noemie went on.  “You didn’t expect to find me here?”

Newman observed the change in her appearance.  She was very elegant and prettier than before; she looked a year or two older, and it was noticeable that, to the eye, she had only gained in respectability.  She looked “lady-like.”  She was dressed in quiet colors, and wore her expensively unobtrusive toilet with a grace that might have come from years of practice.  Her present self-possession and aplomb struck Newman as really infernal, and he inclined to agree with Valentin de Bellegarde that the young lady was very remarkable.  “No, to tell the truth, I didn’t come for you,” he said, “and I didn’t expect to find you.  I was told,” he added in a moment “that you had left your father.”

“Quelle horreur!” cried Mademoiselle Nioche with a smile.  “Does one leave one’s father?  You have the proof of the contrary.”

“Yes, convincing proof,” said Newman glancing at M. Nioche.  The old man caught his glance obliquely, with his faded, deprecating eye, and then, lifting his empty glass, pretended to drink again.

“Who told you that?” Noemie demanded.  “I know very well.  It was M. de Bellegarde.  Why don’t you say yes?  You are not polite.”

“I am embarrassed,” said Newman.

“I set you a better example.  I know M. de Bellegarde told you.  He knows a great deal about me—­or he thinks he does.  He has taken a great deal of trouble to find out, but half of it isn’t true.  In the first place, I haven’t left my father; I am much too fond of him.  Isn’t it so, little father?  M. de Bellegarde is a charming young man; it is impossible to be cleverer.  I know a good deal about him too; you can tell him that when you next see him.”

“No,” said Newman, with a sturdy grin; “I won’t carry any messages for you.”

“Just as you please,” said Mademoiselle Nioche, “I don’t depend upon you, nor does M. de Bellegarde either.  He is very much interested in me; he can be left to his own devices.  He is a contrast to you.”

“Oh, he is a great contrast to me, I have no doubt” said Newman.  “But I don’t exactly know how you mean it.”