as from an uncertain mind. "You think he's
behaved badly."

"I think he's behaved foolishly--youthfully. But I can understand how
strongly he was tempted. He could say that he was not authorized to stop
Stoller in his mad career."

At this Mrs. March put her hand through her husband's arm.

"I'm not so sure about that," said the general.

March added: "Since I saw him this morning, I've heard something that
disposes me to look at his performance in a friendlier light. It's
something that Stoller told me himself; to heighten my sense of Burnamy's
wickedness. He seems to have felt that I ought to know what a serpent I
was cherishing in my bosom," and he gave Triscoe the facts of Burnamy's
injurious refusal to help Stoller put a false complexion on the opinions
he had allowed him ignorantly to express.

The general grunted again. "Of course he had to refuse, and he has
behaved like a gentleman so far. But that doesn't justify him in having
let Stoller get himself into the scrape."

"No," said March. "It's a tough nut for the casuist to try his tooth on.
And I must say I feel sorry for Stoller."

Mrs. March plucked her hand from his arm. "I don't, one bit. He was
thoroughly selfish from first to last. He has got just what he deserved."

"Ah, very likely," said her husband. "The question is about Burnamy's
part in giving him his deserts; he had to leave him to them, of course."

The general fixed her with the impenetrable glitter of his eye-glasses,
and left the subject as of no concern to him. "I believe," he said,
rising, "I'll have a look at some of your papers," and he went into the
reading-room.

"Now," said Mrs. March, "he will go home and poison that poor girl's
mind. And, you will have yourself to thank for prejudicing him against
Burnamy."

"Then why didn't you do it yourself, my dear?" he teased; but he was
really too sorry for the whole affair, which he nevertheless enjoyed as
an ethical problem.

The general looked so little at the papers that before March went off for
his morning walk he saw him come out of the reading-room and take his way
down the Alte Wiese. He went directly back to his daughter, and reported
Burnamy's behavior with entire exactness. He dwelt upon his making the
best of a bad business in refusing to help Stoller out of it,
dishonorably and mendaciously; but he did not conceal that it was a bad
business.

"Now, you know all about it," he said at the end, "and I leave the whole