I know it is near some old city on a hill.""Precisely.Poitiers is on a hill," said Madame de Bellegarde.
"I don't know how old it is.We are not afraid to tell you.""It is Poitiers, is it? Very good," said Newman.
"I shall immediately follow Madame de Cintre.""The trains after this hour won't serve you," said Urbain.
"I shall hire a special train!"
"That will be a very silly waste of money," said Madame de Bellegarde.
"It will be time enough to talk about waste three days hence,"Newman answered; and clapping his hat on his head, he departed.
He did not immediately start for Fleurieres; he was too stunned and wounded for consecutive action.He simply walked; he walked straight before him, following the river, till he got out of the enceinte of Paris.He had a burning, tingling sense of personal outrage.
He had never in his life received so absolute a check; he had never been pulled up, or, as he would have said, "let down," so short;and he found the sensation intolerable; he strode along, tapping the trees and lamp-posts fiercely with his stick and inwardly raging.
To lose Madame de Cintre after he had taken such jubilant and triumphant possession of her was as great an affront to his pride as it was an injury to his happiness.And to lose her by the interference and the dictation of others, by an impudent old woman and a pretentious fop stepping in with their "authority"! It was too preposterous, it was too pitiful.
Upon what he deemed the unblushing treachery of the Bellegardes Newman wasted little thought; he consigned it, once for all, to eternal perdition.
But the treachery of Madame de Cintre herself amazed and confounded him;there was a key to the mystery, of course, but he groped for it in vain.
Only three days had elapsed since she stood beside him in the starlight, beautiful and tranquil as the trust with which he had inspired her, and told him that she was happy in the prospect of their marriage.
What was the meaning of the change? of what infernal potion had she tasted?
Poor Newman had a terrible apprehension that she had really changed.
His very admiration for her attached the idea of force and weight to her rupture.But he did not rail at her as false, for he was sure she was unhappy.In his walk he had crossed one of the bridges of the Seine, and he still followed, unheedingly, the long, unbroken quay.
He had left Paris behind him, and he was almost in the country; he was in the pleasant suburb of Auteuil.He stopped at last, looked around him without seeing or caring for its pleasantness, and then slowly turned and at a slower pace retraced his steps.When he came abreast of the fantastic embankment known as the Trocadero, he reflected, through his throbbing pain, that he was near Mrs.Tristram's dwelling, and that Mrs.Tristram, on particular occasions, had much of a woman's kindness in her utterance.
He felt that he needed to pour out his ire and he took the road to her house.
Mrs.Tristram was at home and alone, and as soon as she had looked at him, on his entering the room, she told him that she knew what he had come for.
Newman sat down heavily, in silence, looking at her.