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In my absence this gentleman came in and took the chair beside Noemie in which I had been sitting. My reappearance disgusted him, and he had the grossness to show it. He came within an ace of being impertinent. I don't know who he is; he is some vulgar wretch. I can't think where she picks up such acquaintances. He has been drinking, too, but he knows what he is about.
Presently the Bishop of Dalmatia came in, and sat in his chair opposite me, while we heard the account of Miss Noemie Nightingale, of Upper Norwood, cured in the previous June of deafness, rising, in the case of one ear at least, from a perforation of the drum. She was present at the piscines, when on a sudden she had felt excruciating pains in the ears.
Mademoiselle Noemie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back her chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness of an expensive appearance first down over her flounces and then up at Newman. "You had better have remained an honest girl," Newman said, quietly. M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his daughter got up, still bravely smiling.
They were running from the plantation where they had taken refuge, as it was not safe from the shells, as the gunboats had proved to them. The reports we had heard in the morning were from shots fired on this side of the river by them, in hopes of hurting a guerrilla or two. Noémie told us that two Western regiments had laid down their arms, and General Williams had been killed by his own men.
Oh, I was wide awake, then. My father was a great commercant; he placed me for a year in a counting-house in England. Some of it stuck to me; but I have forgotten!" "How much French can I learn in a month?" "What does he say?" asked Mademoiselle Noemie. M. Nioche explained. "He will speak like an angel!" said his daughter.
"I shall have gained a charming memory," said Valentin. "You are going away? your day is over?" "My father is coming to fetch me," said Mademoiselle Noemie. She had hardly spoken when, through the door behind her, which opens on one of the great white stone staircases of the Louvre, M. Nioche made his appearance.
He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at the same time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers. He was evidently finding Mademoiselle Noemie extremely interesting; the blue devils had departed, leaving the field clear. "Tell me something about your travels," murmured the young girl.
She knows and admires Noemie, and she told me what I have just repeated." A month elapsed without M. Nioche reappearing, and Newman, who every morning read two or three suicides in the "Figaro," began to suspect that, mortification proving stubborn, he had sought a balm for his wounded pride in the waters of the Seine.
The morning after the conversation just narrated, Newman reverted to his intention of meeting Mademoiselle Noemie at the Louvre. M. Nioche appeared preoccupied, and left his budget of anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff, and sent certain oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil.
He took a kindly leave of M. Nioche, having assured him that, so far as he was concerned, the blue-cloaked Madonna herself might have been present at his interview with Mademoiselle Noemie; and left the old man nursing his breast-pocket, in an ecstasy which the acutest misfortune might have been defied to dissipate.
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