inted, he would be all the more apt to rush into
a flirtation with somebody else."

Miss Triscoe took down her handkerchief from a face that had certainly
not been beautified by grief. "I didn't blame him for the flirting; or
not so much. It was his keeping it from me afterwards. He ought to have
told me the very first instant we were engaged. But he didn't. He let it
go on, and if I hadn't happened on that bouquet I might never have known
anything about it. That is what I mean by--a false nature. I wouldn't
have minded his deceiving me; but to let me deceive myself--Oh, it was
too much!"

Agatha hid her face in her handkerchief again. She was perching on the
edge of the berth, and Mrs. March said, with a glance, which she did not
see, toward the sofa, "I'm afraid that's rather a hard seat for you.

"Oh, no, thank you! I'm perfectly comfortable--I like it--if you don't
mind?"

Mrs. March pressed her hand for answer, and after another little delay,
sighed and said, "They are not like us, and we cannot help it. They are
more temporizing."

"How do you mean?" Agatha unmasked again.

"They can bear to keep things better than we can, and they trust to time
to bring them right, or to come right of themselves."

"I don't think Mr. March would trust things to come right of themselves!"
said Agatha in indignant accusal of Mrs. March's sincerity.

"Ah, that's just what he would do, my dear, and has done, all along; and
I don't believe we could have lived through without it: we should have
quarrelled ourselves into the grave!"

"Mrs. March!"

"Yes, indeed. I don't mean that he would ever deceive me. But he would
let things go on, and hope that somehow they would come right without any
fuss."

"Do you mean that he would let anybody deceive themselves?"

"I'm afraid he would--if he thought it would come right. It used to be a
terrible trial to me; and it is yet, at times when I don't remember that
he means nothing but good and kindness by it. Only the other day in
Ansbach--how long ago it seems!--he let a poor old woman give him her
son's address in Jersey City, and allowed her to believe he would look
him up when we got back and tell him we had seen her. I don't believe,
unless I keep right round after him, as we say in New England, that he'll
ever go near the man."

Agatha looked daunted, but she said, "That is a very different thing."

"It isn't a different kind of thing. And it shows what men are,--the
sweetest