time Miss Triscoe came
toward her from the opposite direction. She nodded brightly to him, and
he gave her a bow and smile too; he always had so many of them to spare.

"Here is your chair!" Mrs. March called to her, drawing the shawl out
of the chair next her own. "Mr. March is wandering about the ship
somewhere."

"I'll keep it for him," said Miss Triscoe, and as Burnamy offered to
take the shawl that hung in the hollow of her arm, she let it slip into
his hand with an "Oh; thank you," which seemed also a permission for him
to wrap it about her in the chair.

He stood talking before the ladies, but he looked up and down the
promenade. The pivotal girl showed herself at the corner of the
music-room, as she had done the day before. At first she revolved there
as if she were shedding her light on some one hidden round the corner;
then she moved a few paces farther out and showed herself more obviously
alone. Clearly she was there for Burnamy to come and walk with her; Mrs.
March could see that, and she felt that Miss Triscoe saw it too. She
waited for her to dismiss him to his flirtation; but Miss Triscoe kept
chatting on, and he kept answering, and making no motion to get away.
Mrs. March began to be as sorry for her as she was ashamed for him. Then
she heard him saying, "Would you like a turn or two?" and Miss Triscoe
answering, "Why, yes, thank you," and promptly getting out of her chair
as if the pains they had both been at to get her settled in it were all
nothing.

She had the composure to say, "You can leave your shawl with me, Miss
Triscoe," and to receive her fervent, "Oh, thank you," before they
sailed off together, with inhuman indifference to the girl at the corner
of the music-room. Then she sank into a kind of triumphal collapse, from
which she roused herself to point her husband to the chair beside her
when he happened along.

He chose to be perverse about her romance. "Well, now, you had better
let them alone. Remember Kendricks." He meant one of their young friends
whose love-affair they had promoted till his happy marriage left them
in lasting doubt of what they had done. "My sympathies are all with the
pivotal girl. Hadn't she as much right to him, for the time being, or
for good and all, as Miss Triscoe?"

"That depends upon what you think of Burnamy."

"Well, I don't like to see a girl have a young man snatched away from
her just when she's made sure of him. How do you suppose she is feeling