think anything can do that, after an afternoon of
Kenby's confidences."

"It's worse than Kenby," she said with a sigh. "You know I told you at
Carlsbad I thought that ridiculous old thing was making up to Mrs.
Adding."

"Kenby? Why of co--"

"Don't be stupid, my dear! No, not Kenby: General Triscoe. I wish you
could have been here to see him paying her all sort; of silly attentions,
and hear him making her compliments."

"Thank you. I think I'm just as well without it. Did she pay him silly
attentions and compliments, too?"

"That's the only thing that can make me forgive her for his wanting her.
She was keeping him at arm's-length the whole time, and she was doing it
so as not to make him contemptible before his daughter."

"It must have been hard. And Rose?"

"Rose didn't seem very well. He looks thin and pale; but he's sweeter
than ever. She's certainly commoner clay than Rose. No, I won't say that!
It's really nothing but General Triscoe's being an old goose about her
that makes her seem so, and it isn't fair."

March went down to his coffee in the morning with the delicate duty of
telling Kenby that Mrs. Adding was in town. Kenby seemed to think it
quite natural she should wish to see the manoeuvres, and not at all
strange that she should come to them with General Triscoe and his
daughter. He asked if March would not go with him to call upon her after
breakfast, and as this was in the line of his own instructions from Mrs.
March, he went.

They found Mrs. Adding with the Triscoes, and March saw nothing that was
not merely friendly, or at the most fatherly, in the general's behavior
toward her. If Mrs. Adding or Miss Triscoe saw more, they hid it in a
guise of sisterly affection for each other. At the most the general
showed a gayety which one would not have expected of him under any
conditions, and which the fact that he and Rose had kept each other awake
a good deal the night before seemed so little adapted to call out. He
joked with Rose about their room and their beds, and put on a comradery
with him that was not a perfect fit, and that suffered by contrast with
the pleasure of the boy and Kenby in meeting. There was a certain
question in the attitude of Mrs. Adding till March helped Kenby to
account for his presence; then she relaxed in an effect of security so
tacit that words overstate it, and began to make fun of Rose.

March could not find that Miss Triscoe looked unhappy, as his wife had
sai