but you!"

"You have strange ways of showing your devotion. Well, say you are not
fickle. Say, that I'm fickle. I am. I have changed my mind. I see
that it would never do. I leave you free to follow all the turning and
twisting of your fancy." She spoke rapidly, almost breathlessly, and she
gave him no chance to get out the words that seemed to choke him. She
began to run, but at the door of the hotel she stopped and waited till
he came stupidly up. "I have a favor to ask, Mr. Burnamy. I beg you will
not see me again, if you can help it before we go to-morrow. My father
and I are indebted to you for too many kindnesses, and you mustn't take
any more trouble on our account. August can see us off in the morning."

She nodded quickly, and was gone in-doors while he was yet struggling
with his doubt of the reality of what had all so swiftly happened.

General Triscoe was still ignorant of any change in the status to which
he had reconciled himself with so much difficulty, when he came down to
get into the omnibus for the train. Till then he had been too proud
to ask what had become of Burnamy, though he had wondered, but now he
looked about and said impatiently, "I hope that young man isn't going to
keep us waiting."

Agatha was pale and worn with sleeplessness, but she said firmly, "He
isn't going, papa. I will tell you in the train. August will see to the
tickets and the baggage."

August conspired with the traeger to get them a first-class compartment
to themselves. But even with the advantages of this seclusion Agatha's
confidences to her father were not full. She told her father that her
engagement was broken for reasons that did not mean anything very
wrong in Mr. Burnamy but that convinced her they could never be happy
together. As she did not give the reasons, he found a natural difficulty
in accepting them, and there was something in the situation which
appealed strongly to his contrary-mindedness. Partly from this, partly
from his sense of injury in being obliged so soon to adjust himself to
new conditions, and partly from his comfortable feeling of security
from an engagement to which his assent had been forced, he said, "I hope
you're not making a mistake."

"Oh, no," she answered, and she attested her conviction by a burst of
sobbing that lasted well on the way to the first stop of the train.

LXIX.

It would have been always twice as easy to go direct from Berlin to the
Hague through Hanover; b