Give me a letter to her, signed and sealed, saying you
retract and that she may marry me with your blessing, and I will take
it to her at the convent and bring her out. There's your chance--I call
those easy terms."
"We look at the matter otherwise, you know. We call them very hard
terms," said Urbain de Bellegarde. They had all remained standing
rigidly in the middle of the room. "I think my mother will tell you that
she would rather her daughter should become Soeur Catherine than Mrs.
Newman."
But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make
her epigrams for her. She only smiled, almost sweetly, shaking her head
and repeating, "But once, Mr. Newman; but once!"
Nothing that Newman had ever seen or heard gave him such a sense of
marble hardness as this movement and the tone that accompanied it.
"Could anything compel you?" he asked. "Do you know of anything that
would force you?"
"This language, sir," said the marquis, "addressed to people in
bereavement and grief is beyond all qualification."
"In most cases," Newman answered, "your objection would have some
weight, even admitting that Madame de Cintre's present intentions make
time precious. But I have thought of what you speak of, and I have come
here to-day without scruple simply because I consider your brother and
you two very different parties.
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