A fancy possessed March that by operation of temperamental laws General Triscoe was no more satisfied with Burnamy’s final rejection than with his acceptance.  If the engagement was ever to be renewed, it might be another thing; but as it stood, March divined a certain favor for the young man in the general’s attitude.  But the affair was altogether too delicate for comment; the general’s aristocratic frankness in dealing 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 disappointed, he would be all the more apt to rush into a flirtation with somebody else.”