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He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she greeted him with were: "But she's admirable votre petite admirable, admirable!" There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the moment old Mme. d'Outreville who naturally asked for news of the object of such enthusiasm.

Mme. d'Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of breaking out: "I propose to marry it there!"

The feeling with which he had watched Madame d'Outreville at the treacherous festival of the Bellegardes came back to him; she struck him as a wonderful old lady in a comedy, particularly well up in her part. He observed before long that she asked him no questions about their common friends; she made no allusion to the circumstances under which he had been presented to her.

Newman fancied that he saw signs in M. de Bellegarde's discolored mask that this information was extremely pertinent. But it may have been merely fancy; for the marquis remained majestically argumentative. "For instance, Madame d'Outreville," he said, "of whom you spoke yesterday. I can imagine nothing that would shock her more." "Oh, I am quite prepared to shock Madame d'Outreville, you know.

Newman said to himself, at this, that Madame d'Outreville intended, after all, that they should discuss the Bellegardes together. The prince was a short, stout man, with a head disproportionately large. He had a dusky complexion and a bushy eyebrow, beneath which his eye wore a fixed and somewhat defiant expression; he seemed to be challenging you to insinuate that he was top-heavy.

He knew who was coming to his sister's in the Place Beauvau: Mme. d'Outreville and M. de Grospre, old M. Courageau, Mme. de Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge; but he was fascinated by the idea of the contrast between what he preferred and what he gave up. His life had long been wanting painfully wanting in the element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring it in.