r your behavior to that poor woman about her son in
Jersey City, you're really capable of it."

"What comprehensive inculpation! I had forgotten about that poor woman."

LI.

The letters which March had asked his Nuremberg banker to send them came
just as they were leaving Ansbach. The landlord sent them down to the
station, and Mrs. March opened them in the train, and read them first so
that she could prepare him if there were anything annoying in them, as
well as indulge her livelier curiosity.

"They're from both the children," she said, without waiting for him to
ask. "You can look at them later. There's a very nice letter from Mrs.
Adding to me, and one from dear little Rose for you." Then she hesitated,
with her hand on a letter faced down in her lap. "And there's one from
Agatha Triscoe, which I wonder what you'll think of." She delayed again,
and then flashed it open before him, and waited with a sort of
impassioned patience while he read it.

He read it, and gave it back to her. "There doesn't seem to be very much
in it."

"That's it! Don't you think I had a right to there being something in it,
after all I did for her?"

"I always hoped you hadn't done anything for her, but if you have, why
should she give herself away on paper? It's a very proper letter."

"It's a little too proper, and it's the last I shall have to do with her.
She knew that I should be on pins and needles till I heard how her father
had taken Burnamy's being there, that night, and she doesn't say a word
about it."

"The general may have had a tantrum that she couldn't describe. Perhaps
she hasn't told him, yet."

"She would tell him instantly!" cried Mrs. March who began to find reason
in the supposition, as well as comfort for the hurt which the girl's
reticence had given her. "Or if she wouldn't, it would be because she was
waiting for the best chance."

"That would be like the wise daughter of a difficult father. She may be
waiting for the best chance to say how he took it. No, I'm all for Miss
Triscoe, and I hope that now, if she's taken herself off our hands,
she'll keep off."

"It's altogether likely that he's made her promise not to tell me
anything about it," Mrs. March mused aloud.

"That would be unjust to a person who had behaved so discreetly as you
have," said her husband.

They were on their way to Wurzburg, and at the first station, which was a
junction, a lady mounted to their compartment just before