"I have seen nothing objectionable except my husband leaning against the wall and talking to an individual whom I suppose he takes for a duke, but whom I more than suspect to be the functionary who attends to the lamps.

Do you think you could separate them?
Knock over a lamp!" I doubt whether Newman, who saw no harm in Tristram's conversing with an ingenious mechanic, would have complied with this request; but at this moment Valentin de Bellegarde drew near.

Newman, some weeks previously, had presented Madame de Cintre's youngest brother to Mrs.Tristram, for whose merits Valentin professed a discriminating relish and to whom he had paid several visits.
"Did you ever read Keats's Belle Dame sans Merci ?" asked Mrs.Tristram.
"You remind me of the hero of the ballad:-- 'Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering ?'" "If I am alone, it is because I have been deprived of your society," said Valentin.

"Besides it is good manners for no man except Newman to look happy.

This is all to his address.