a part of her beautiful ingenuity; but he never made an application
of anything she said, or remembered it when he was away from her. For
herself, she appropriated him; he was the most interesting thing she
had had to think about in many a month. She wished to do something with
him--she hardly knew what. There was so much of him; he was so rich
and robust, so easy, friendly, well-disposed, that he kept her fancy
constantly on the alert. For the present, the only thing she could do
was to like him. She told him that he was "horribly Western," but in
this compliment the adverb was tinged with insincerity. She led him
about with her, introduced him to fifty people, and took extreme
satisfaction in her conquest. Newman accepted every proposal, shook
hands universally and promiscuously, and seemed equally unfamiliar
with trepidation or with elation. Tom Tristram complained of his wife's
avidity, and declared that he could never have a clear five minutes with
his friend. If he had known how things were going to turn out, he never
would have brought him to the Avenue d'Iena. The two men, formerly, had
not been intimate, but Newman remembered his earlier impression of his
host, and did Mrs. Tristram, who had by no means taken him into her
confidence, but whose secret he presently discovered, the justice to
admit that her husband was a rather degenerate mortal. At twenty-five he
had been a good fellow, and in this respect he was unchanged; but of a
man of his age one expected something more. People said he was sociable,
but this was as much a matter of course as for a dipped sponge to
expand; and it was not a high order of sociability. He was a great
gossip and tattler, and to produce a laugh would hardly have spared the
reputation of his aged mother. Newman had a kindness for old memories,
but he found it impossible not to perceive that Tristram was nowadays
a very light weight. His only aspirations were to hold out at poker,
at his club, to know the names of all the cocottes, to shake hands all
round, to ply his rosy gullet with truffles and champagne, and to create