ing
with it might have gone farther if his knowledge had been greater; but in
any case March did not see how he could touch it. He could only say, He
had always liked Burnamy, himself.

He had his good qualities, the general owned. He did not profess to
understand the young men of our time; but certainly the fellow had the
instincts of a gentleman. He had nothing to say against him, unless in
that business with that man--what was his name?

"Stoller?" March prompted. "I don't excuse him in that, but I don't blame
him so much, either. If punishment means atonement, he had the
opportunity of making that right very suddenly, and if pardon means
expunction, then I don't see why that offence hasn't been pretty well
wiped out.

"Those things are not so simple as they used to seem," said the general,
with a seriousness beyond his wont in things that did not immediately
concern his own comfort or advantage.

LXXVI.

In the mean time Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe were discussing another
offence of Burnamy's.

"It wasn't," said the girl, excitedly, after a plunge through all the
minor facts to the heart of the matter, "that he hadn't a perfect right
to do it, if he thought I didn't care for him. I had refused him at
Carlsbad, and I had forbidden him to speak to me about--on the subject.
But that was merely temporary, and he ought to have known it. He ought to
have known that I couldn't accept him, on the spur of the moment, that
way; and when he had come back, after going away in disgrace, before he
had done anything to justify himself. I couldn't have kept my
self-respect; and as it was I had the greatest difficulty; and he ought
to have seen it. Of course he said afterwards that he didn't see it. But
when--when I found out that SHE had been in Weimar, and all that time,
while I had been suffering in Carlsbad and Wurzburg, and longing to see
him--let him know how I was really feeling--he was flirting with
that--that girl, then I saw that he was a false nature, and I determined
to put an end to everything. And that is what I did; and I shall always
think I--did right--and--"

The rest was lost in Agatha's handkerchief, which she put up to her eyes.
Mrs. March watched her from her pillow keeping the girl's unoccupied hand
in her own, and softly pressing it till the storm was past sufficiently
to allow her to be heard.

Then she said, "Men are very strange--the best of them. And from the very
fact that he was disappo