with a candor he could not wholly
excuse.

On his way to the hotel he fancied mocking his wife for her interest in
the romantic woes of her lovers, in a world where there was such real
pathos as these poor old people's; but in the company of Miss Triscoe he
could not give himself this pleasure. He tried to amuse her on the
way from Pupp's, with the doubt he always felt in passing the Cafe
Sans-Souci, whether he should live to reach the Posthof where he meant
to breakfast. She said, "Poor Mr. March!" and laughed inattentively;
when he went on to philosophize the commonness of the sparse company
always observable at the Sans-Souci as a just effect of its Laodicean
situation between Pupp's and the Posthof, the girl sighed absently, and
his wife frowned at him.

The flower-woman at the gate of her garden had now only autumnal blooms
for sale in the vases which flanked the entrance; the windrows of the
rowen, left steeping in the dews overnight, exhaled a faint fragrance;
a poor remnant of the midsummer multitudes trailed itself along to the
various cafes of the valley, its pink paper bags of bread rustling like
sere foliage as it moved.

At the Posthof the 'schone' Lili alone was as gay, as in the prime of
July. She played archly about the guests she welcomed to a table in
a sunny spot in the gallery. "You are tired of Carlsbad?" she said
caressingly to Miss Triscoe, as she put her breakfast before her.

"Not of the Posthof," said the girl, listlessly.

"Posthof, and very little Lili?" She showed, with one forefinger on
another, how very little she was.

Miss Triscoe laughed, not cheerily, and Lili said to Mrs. March, with
abrupt seriousness, "Augusta was finding a handkerchief under the table,
and she was washing it and ironing it before she did bring it. I have
scolded her, and I have made her give it to me."

She took from under her apron a man's handkerchief, which she offered to
Mrs. March. It bore, as she saw Miss Triscoe saw, the initials L. J. B.
But, "Whose can it be?" they asked each other.

"Why, Burnamy's," said March; and Lili's eyes danced. "Give it here!"

His wife caught it farther away. "No, I'm going to see whose it is,
first; if it's his, I'll send it to him myself."

She tried to put it into the pocket which was not in her dress by
sliding it down her lap; then she handed it to the girl, who took it
with a careless air, but kept it after a like failure to pocket it.

Mrs. March had come out