Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe had not said a word of the ’battle of Leipsic’, or of the impersonal interests which it suggested to the men.  For all these, they might still have been sitting in their steamer chairs on the promenade of the Norumbia at a period which seemed now of geological remoteness.  The girl accounted for not being in Dresden by her father’s having decided not to go through Berlin but to come by way of Leipsic, which he thought they had better see; they had come without stopping in Hamburg.  They had not enjoyed Leipsic much; it had rained the whole day before, and they had not gone out.  She asked when Mrs. March was going on to Carlsbad, and Mrs. March answered, the next morning; her husband wished to begin his cure at once.

Then Miss Triscoe pensively wondered if Carlsbad would do her father any good; and Mrs. March discreetly inquired General Triscoe’s symptoms.

“Oh, he hasn’t any.  But I know he can’t be well—­with his gloomy opinions.”

“They may come from his liver,” said Mrs. March.  “Nearly everything of that kind does.  I know that Mr. March has been terribly depressed at times, and the doctor said it was nothing but his liver; and Carlsbad is the great place for that, you know.”

“Perhaps I can get papa to run over some day, if he doesn’t like Dresden.  It isn’t very far, is it?”

They referred to Mrs. March’s Baedeker together, and found that it was five hours.

“Yes, that is what I thought,” said Miss Triscoe, with a carelessness which convinced Mrs. March she had looked up the fact already.

“If you decide to come, you must let us get rooms for you at our hotel.  We’re going to Pupp’s; most of the English and Americans go to the hotels on the Hill, but Pupp’s is in the thick of it in the lower town; and it’s very gay, Mr. Kenby says; he’s been there often.  Mr. Burnamy is to get our rooms.”

“I don’t suppose I can get papa to go,” said Miss Triscoe, so insincerely that Mrs. March was sure she had talked over the different routes; to Carlsbad with Burnamy—­probably on the way from Cuxhaven.  She looked up from digging the point of her umbrella in the ground.  “You didn’t meet him here this morning?”

Mrs. March governed herself to a calm which she respected in asking, “Has Mr. Burnamy been here?”

“He came on with Mr. and Mrs. Eltwin, when we did, and they all decided to stop over a day.  They left on the twelve-o’clock train to-day.”

Mrs. March perceived that the girl had decided not to let the facts betray themselves by chance, and she treated them as of no significance.

“No, we didn’t see him,” she said, carelessly.

The two men came walking slowly towards them, and Miss Triscoe said, “We’re going to Dresden this evening, but I hope we shall meet somewhere, Mrs. March.”

“Oh, people never lose sight of each other in Europe; they can’t; it’s so little!”