ns were giving the afternoon concert. Between its two
stationary divisions moved a current of promenaders, with some such
effect as if the colors of a lovely garden should have liquefied and
flowed in mingled rose and lilac, pink and yellow, and white and orange,
and all the middle tints of modern millinery. Above on one side were the
agreeable bulks of architecture, in the buff and gray of Carlsbad; and
far beyond on the other were the upland slopes, with villas and long
curves of country roads, belted in with miles of wall. "It would be
about as offensive to have a love-interest that one personally knew
about intruded here," he said, "as to have a two-spanner carriage driven
through this crowd. It ought to be forbidden by the municipality."

Mrs. March listened with her ears, but not with her eyes, and
she answered: "See that handsome young Greek priest! Isn't he an
archimandrite? The portier said he was."

"Then let him pass for an archimandrite. Now," he recurred to his
grievance again, dreamily, "I have got to take Papa Triscoe in hand, and
poison his mind against Burnamy, and I shall have to instil a few drops
of venomous suspicion against Kenby into the heart of poor little Rose
Adding. Oh;" he broke out, "they will spoil everything. They'll be
with us morning, noon, and night," and he went on to work the joke of
repining at his lot. The worst thing, he said, would be the lovers'
pretence of being interested in something besides themselves, which they
were no more capable of than so many lunatics. How could they care for
pretty girls playing tennis on an upland level, in the waning afternoon?
Or a cartful of peasant women stopping to cross themselves at a way-side
shrine? Or a whistling boy with holes in his trousers pausing from some
wayside raspberries to touch his hat and say good-morning? Or those
preposterous maidens sprinkling linen on the grass from watering-pots
while the skies were full of rain? Or that blacksmith shop where Peter
the Great made a horseshoe. Or the monument of the young warrior-poet
Koerner, with a gentle-looking girl and her mother reading and knitting
on a bench before it? These simple pleasures sufficed them, but what
could lovers really care for them? A peasant girl flung down on the
grassy road-side, fast asleep, while her yoke-fellow, the gray old dog,
lay in his harness near her with one drowsy eye half open for her and
the other for the contents of their cart; a boy chasing a red