e time?" he temporized, not quite able to resist
her gayety.

"Well, the kind of time I had."

"Did you get rheumatism from sitting on the grass? I took cold in that
old church, and the tea at that restaurant must have been brewed in a
brass kettle. I suffered all night from it. And that ass from Illinois--"

"Oh, poor papa! I couldn't go with Mr. Stoller alone, but I might have
gone in the two-spanner with him and let you have Mr. or Mrs. March in
the one-spanner."

"I don't know. Their interest in each other isn't so interesting to other
people as they seem to think."

"Do you feel that way really, papa? Don't you like their being so much in
love still?"

"At their time of life? Thank you it's bad enough in young people."

The girl did not answer; she appeared altogether occupied in pouring out
her father's coffee.

He tasted it, and then he drank pretty well all of it; but he said, as he
put his cup down, "I don't know what they make this stuff of. I wish I
had a cup of good, honest American coffee."

"Oh, there's nothing like American food!" said his daughter, with so much
conciliation that he looked up sharply.

But whatever he might have been going to say was at least postponed by
the approach of a serving-maid, who brought a note to his daughter. She
blushed a little at sight of it, and then tore it open and read:

"I am going away from Carlsbad, for a fault of my own which forbids me to
look you in the face. If you wish to know the worst of me, ask Mrs.
March. I have no heart to tell you."

Agatha read these mystifying words of Burnamy's several times over in a
silent absorption with them which left her father to look after himself,
and he had poured out a second cup of coffee with his own hand, and was
reaching for the bread beside her before she came slowly back to a sense
of his presence.

"Oh, excuse me, papa," she said, and she gave him the butter. "Here's a
very strange letter from Mr. Burnamy, which I think you'd better see."
She held the note across the table to him, and watched his face as he
read it.

After he had read it twice, he turned the sheet over, as people do with
letters that puzzle them, in the vain hope of something explanatory on
the back. Then he looked up and asked: "What do you suppose he's been
doing?"

"I don't believe he's been doing anything. It's something that Mr.
Stoller's been doing to him."

"I shouldn't infer that from his own words. What makes you think th