General Triscoe--and Agatha."

"Very well. That's what I call shabby. Don't ever talk to me again
about the inconsistencies of women. But now there's something perfectly
fearful."

"What is it?"

"A letter from Miss Triscoe came after you were gone, asking us to find
rooms in some hotel for her and her father to-morrow. He isn't well, and
they're coming. And I've telegraphed them to come here. Now what do you
say?"

LXII.

They could see no way out of the trouble, and Mrs. March could not
resign herself to it till her husband suggested that she should consider
it providential. This touched the lingering superstition in which she
had been ancestrally taught to regard herself as a means, when in a very
tight place, and to leave the responsibility with the moral government
of the universe. As she now perceived, it had been the same as ordered
that they should see Burnamy under such conditions in the afternoon that
they could not speak to him, and hear where he was staying; and in an
inferior degree it had been the same as ordered that March should see
him in the evening and tell him everything, so that she should know
just how to act when she saw him in the morning. If he could plausibly
account for the renewal of his flirtation with Miss Elkins, or if he
seemed generally worthy apart from that, she could forgive him.

It was so pleasant when he came in at breakfast with his well-remembered
smile, that she did not require from him any explicit defence. While
they talked she was righting herself in an undercurrent of drama with
Miss Triscoe, and explaining to her that they could not possibly wait
over for her and her father in Weimar, but must be off that day for
Berlin, as they had made all their plans. It was not easy, even in drama
where one has everything one's own way, to prove that she could not
without impiety so far interfere with the course of Providence as to
prevent Miss Triscoe's coming with her father to the same hotel where
Burnamy was staying. She contrived, indeed, to persuade her that she had
not known he was staying there when she telegraphed them where to come,
and that in the absence of any open confidence from Miss Triscoe she was
not obliged to suppose that his presence would be embarrassing.

March proposed leaving her with Burnamy while he went up into the town
and interviewed the house of Schiller, which he had not done yet; and
as soon as he got himself away she came to business, bre