s if
to make sure that every one saw her smiling.

Mrs. March felt her husband's gaze following her own, and she had
just time to press her finger firmly on his arm and reduce his cry of
astonishment to the hoarse whisper in which he gasped, "Good gracious!
It's the pivotal girl!"

At the same moment the girl rose with her mother, and with the young
man, who had risen too, came directly toward the Marches on their way
out of the place without noticing them, though Burnamy passed so near
that Mrs. March could almost have touched him.

She had just strength to say, "Well, my dear! That was the cut direct."

She said this in order to have her husband reassure her. "Nonsense! He
never saw us. Why didn't you speak to him?"

"Speak to him? I never shall speak to him again. No! This is the last of
Mr. Burnamy for me. I shouldn't have minded his not recognizing us, for,
as you say, I don't believe he saw us; but if he could go back to such a
girl as that, and flirt with her, after Miss Triscoe, that's all I wish
to know of him. Don't you try to look him up, Basil! I'm glad-yes, I'm
glad he doesn't know how Stoller has come to feel about him; he deserves
to suffer, and I hope he'll keep on suffering: You were quite right,
my dear--and it shows how true your instinct is in such things (I don't
call it more than instinct)--not to tell him what Stoller said, and I
don't want you ever should."

She had risen in her excitement, and was making off in such haste that
she would hardly give him time to pay for their tea, as she pulled him
impatiently to their carriage.

At last he got a chance to say, "I don't think I can quite promise that;
my mind's been veering round in the other direction. I think I shall
tell him."

"What! After you've seen him flirting with that girl? Very well, then,
you won't, my dear; that's all! He's behaving very basely to Agatha."

"What's his flirtation with all the girls in the universe to do with my
duty to him? He has a right to know what Stoller thinks. And as to his
behaving badly toward Miss Triscoe, how has he done it? So far as you
know, there is nothing whatever between them. She either refused him
outright, that last night in Carlsbad, or else she made impossible
conditions with him. Burnamy is simply consoling himself, and I don't
blame him."

"Consoling himself with a pivotal girl!" cried Mrs. March.

"Yes, with a pivotal girl. Her pivotality may be a nervous idiosyncrasy,
or it may