Kenby laughed, and Mrs. March laughed too, but with an inner note of protest.

“Well,” Kenby continued, still addressing her, “what I want you to do is to stand by me when I propose it.”

Mrs. March gathered strength to say, “No, Mr. Kenby, it’s your own affair, and you must take the responsibility.”

“Do you disapprove?”

“It isn’t the same as it would be at home.  You see that yourself.”

“Well,” said Kenby, rising, “I have to arrange about their getting away to-morrow.  It won’t be easy in this hurly-burly that’s coming off.”

“Give Rose our love; and tell Mrs. Adding that I’ll come round and see her to-morrow before she starts.”

“Oh!  I’m afraid you can’t, Mrs. March.  They’re to start at six in the morning.”

“They are!  Then we must go and see them tonight.  We’ll be there almost as soon as you are.”

March went up to their rooms with, his wife, and she began on the stairs: 

“Well, my dear, I hope you realize that your laughing so gave us completely away.  And what was there to keep grinning about, all through?”

“Nothing but the disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love.  It’s always the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection for Rose, was more than I could stand.  I don’t apologize for laughing; I wanted to yell.”

His effrontery and his philosophy both helped to save him; and she said from the point where he had side-tracked her mind:  “I don’t call it disingenuous.  He was brutally frank.  He’s made it impossible to treat the affair with dignity.  I want you to leave the whole thing to me, from this out.  Now, will you?”

On their way to the Spanischer Hof she arranged in her own mind for Mrs. Adding to get a maid, and for the doctor to send an assistant with her on the journey, but she was in such despair with her scheme that she had not the courage to right herself when Mrs. Adding met her with the appeal: 

“Oh, Mrs. March, I’m so glad you approve of Mr. Kenby’s plan.  It does seem the only thing to do.  I can’t trust myself alone with Rose, and Mr. Kenby’s intending to go to Schevleningen a few days later anyway.  Though it’s too bad to let him give up the manoeuvres.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind that,” Mrs. March’s voice said mechanically, while her thought was busy with the question whether this scandalous duplicity was altogether Kenby’s, and whether Mrs. Adding was as guiltless of any share in it as she looked.  She looked pitifully distracted; she might not have understood his report; or Kenby might really have mistaken Mrs. March’s sympathy for favor.

“No, he only lives to do good,” Mrs. Adding returned.  “He’s with Rose; won’t you come in and see them?”

Rose was lying back on the pillows of a sofa, from which they would not let him get up.  He was full of the trip to Holland, and had already pushed Kenby, as Kenby owned, beyond the bounds of his very general knowledge of the Dutch language, which Rose had plans for taking up after they were settled in Schevleningen.  The boy scoffed at the notion that he was not perfectly well, and he wished to talk with March on the points where he had found Kenby wanting.