Only, I must make this request: that you explain the joke to me as soon as you can speak.

I don't want to lose anything, myself." M.de Bellegarde stared, with a look of unresentful perplexity.

He laid his hand on Newman's sleeve and seemed on the point of saying something, but he suddenly checked himself, leaned back in his chair, and puffed at his cigar.

At last, however, breaking silence,--"Certainly," he said, "my coming to see you is an act of friendship.

Nevertheless I was in a measure obliged to do so.