ome the faces of acquaintance began to go. In the
diminishing crowd the smile of Otterson was no longer to be seen; the
sad, severe visage of Major Eltwin, who seemed never to have quite got
his bearings after his error with General Triscoe, seldom showed itself.
The Triscoes themselves kept out of the Marches' way, or they fancied
so; Mrs. Adding and Rose alone remained of their daily encounter.

It was full summer, as it is everywhere in mid-August, but at Carlsbad
the sun was so late getting up over the hills that as people went to
their breakfasts at the cafes up the valley of the Tepl they found him
looking very obliquely into it at eight o'clock in the morning. The
yellow leaves were thicker about the feet of the trees, and the grass
was silvery gray with the belated dews. The breakfasters were fewer than
they had been, and there were more little barefooted boys and girls with
cups of red raspberries which they offered to the passers with cries of
"Himbeeren! Himbeeren!" plaintive as the notes of birds left songless by
the receding summer.

March was forbidden the fruit, but his wife and Mrs. Adding bought
recklessly of it, and ate it under his eyes with their coffee and bread,
pouring over it pots of clotted cream that the 'schone' Lili brought
them. Rose pretended an indifference to it, which his mother betrayed
was a sacrifice in behalf of March's inability.

Lili's delays in coming to be paid had been such that the Marches now
tried to pay her when she brought their breakfast, but they sometimes
forgot, and then they caught her whenever she came near them. In this
event she liked to coquet with their impatience; she would lean against
their table, and say: "Oh, no. You stay a little. It is so nice." One
day after such an entreaty, she said, "The queen is here, this morning."

Mrs. March started, in the hope of highhotes. "The queen!"

"Yes; the young lady. Mr. Burnamy was saying she was a queen. She is
there with her father." She nodded in the direction of a distant corner,
and the Marches knew that she meant Miss Triscoe and the general. "She
is not seeming so gayly as she was being."

March smiled. "We are none of us so gayly as we were being, Lili. The
summer is going."

"But Mr. Burnamy will be returning, not true?" the girl asked, resting
her tray on the corner of the table.

"No, I'm afraid he won't," March returned sadly.

"He was very good. He was paying the proprietor for the dishes that
Aug