the general," March suggested, and the men
apparently thought this was a joke. Mrs. March did not laugh in her
feminine worry about ways and means.
"Where is Miss Triscoe?" she asked. "We haven't seen them."
"Didn't Mrs. Adding tell you? They went to supper at a restaurant; the
general doesn't like the cooking here. They ought to have been back
before this."
He looked up at the clock on the wall, and she said, "I suppose you would
like us to wait."
"It would be very kind of you."
"Oh, it's quite essential," she returned with an airy freshness which
Kenby did not seem to feel as painfully as he ought.
They all sat down, and the Triscoes came in after a few minutes, and a
cloud on the general's face lifted at the proposition Kenby left Mrs.
March to make.
"I thought that child ought to be in his mother's charge," he said. With
his own comfort provided for, he made no objections to Mrs. March's plan;
and Agatha went to take leave of Rose and his mother. "By-the-way," the
general turned to March, "I found Stoller at the restaurant where we
supped. He offered me a place in his carriage for the manoeuvres. How are
you going?"
"I think I shall go by train. I don't fancy the long drive."
"Well, I don't know that it's worse than the long walk after you leave
the train," said the general from the offence which any difference of
taste was apt to give him. "Are you going by train, too?" he asked Kenby
with indifference.
"I'm not going at all," said Kenby. "I'm leaving Wurzburg in the
morning."
"Oh, indeed," said the general.
Mrs. March could not make out whether he knew that Kenby was going with
Rose and Mrs. Adding, but she felt that there must be a full and open
recognition of the fact among them. "Yes," she said, "isn't it fortunate
that Mr. Kenby should be going to Holland, too! I should have been so
unhappy about them if Mrs. Adding had been obliged to make that long
journey with poor little Rose alone."
"Yes, yes; very fortunate, certainly," said the general colorlessly.
Her husband gave her a glance of intelligent appreciation; but Kenby was
too simply, too densely content with the situation to know the value of
what she had done. She thought he must certainly explain, as he walked
back with her to the Swan, whether he had misrepresented her to Mrs.
Adding, or Mrs. Adding had misunderstood him. Somewhere there had been an
error, or a duplicity which it was now useless to punish; and Kenby was
|