That is how I come to be so bold, sir.

They say you want to marry her." Newman eyed his interlocutress and satisfied himself that she was not a gossip, but a zealot; she looked anxious, appealing, discreet.

"It is quite true," he said.

"I want to marry Madame de Cintre." "And to take her away to America ?" "I will take her wherever she wants to go." "The farther away the better, sir!" exclaimed the old woman, with sudden intensity.

But she checked herself, and, taking up a paper-weight in mosaic, began to polish it with her black apron.