ere
behind the scenes with Mr. March; afterwards I met him in the crowd."

"Well?"

"I thought you ought to know. Mrs. March said I ought to tell you."

"Did she say you ought to wait a week?" He gave way to an irascibility
which he tried to check, and to ask with indifference, "Why did he come
back?"

"He was going to write about it for that paper in Paris." The girl had
the effect of gathering her courage up for a bold plunge. She looked
steadily at her father, and added: "He said he came back because he
couldn't help it. He--wished to speak with me, He said he knew he had no
right to suppose I cared anything about what had happened with him and
Mr. Stoller. He wanted to come back and tell me--that."

Her father waited for her to go on, but apparently she was going to leave
the word to him, now. He hesitated to take it, but he asked at last with
a mildness that seemed to surprise her, "Have you heard anything from him
since?"

"No."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. I told him I could not say what he wished; that I must
tell you about it."

The case was less simple than it would once have been for General
Triscoe. There was still his affection for his daughter, his wish for her
happiness, but this had always been subordinate to his sense of his own
interest and comfort, and a question had recently arisen which put his
paternal love and duty in a new light. He was no more explicit with
himself than other men are, and the most which could ever be said of him
without injustice was that in his dependence upon her he would rather
have kept his daughter to himself if she could not have been very
prosperously married. On the other hand, if he disliked the man for whom
she now hardly hid her liking, he was not just then ready to go to
extremes concerning him.

"He was very anxious," she went on, "that you should know just how it
was. He thinks everything of your judgment and--and--opinion." The
general made a consenting noise in his throat. "He said that he did not
wish me to 'whitewash' him to you. He didn't think he had done right; he
didn't excuse himself, or ask you to excuse him unless you could from the
stand-point of a gentleman."

The general made a less consenting noise in his throat, and asked, "How
do you look at it, yourself, Agatha?"

"I don't believe I quite understand it; but Mrs. March--"

"Oh, Mrs. March!" the general snorted.

"--says that Mr. March does not think so badly of it as Mr. Burna