Brant and a Brautigam, the people of Weimar would have been puzzled
to say what it was. It was known that the gracious young lady's father,
who would naturally have accompanied them, was sick, and in the fact that
they were Americans much extenuation was found for whatever was
phenomenal in their unencumbered enjoyment of each other's society.
If their free American association was indistinguishably like the peasant
informality which General Triscoe despised in the relations of Kenby and
Mrs. Adding, it is to be said in his excuse that he could not be fully
cognizant of it, in the circumstances, and so could do nothing to prevent
it. His pessimism extended to his health; from the first he believed
himself worse than the doctor thought him, and he would have had some
other physician if he had not found consolation in their difference of
opinion and the consequent contempt which he was enabled to cherish for
the doctor in view of the man's complete ignorance of the case. In proof
of his own better understanding of it, he remained in bed some time after
the doctor said he might get up.
Nearly ten days had passed before he left his room, and it was not till
then that he clearly saw how far affairs had gone with his daughter and
Burnamy, though even then his observance seemed to have anticipated
theirs. He found them in a quiet acceptance of the fortune which had
brought them together, so contented that they appeared to ask nothing
more of it. The divine patience and confidence of their youth might
sometimes have had almost the effect of indifference to a witness who had
seen its evolution from the moods of the first few days of their reunion
in Weimar. To General Triscoe, however, it looked like an understanding
which had been made without reference to his wishes, and had not been
directly brought to his knowledge.
"Agatha," he said, after due note of a gay contest between her and
Burnamy over the pleasure and privilege of ordering his supper sent to
his room when he had gone back to it from his first afternoon in the open
air, "how long is that young man going to stay in Weimar?"
"Why, I don't know!" she answered, startled from her work of beating the
sofa pillows into shape, and pausing with one of them in her hand. "I
never asked him." She looked down candidly into his face where he sat in
an easy-chair waiting for her arrangement of the sofa. "What makes you
ask?"
He answered with another question. "Does he kn
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