Amidst the shows of a hardened worldliness there were touching glimpses of domesticity and heart:  a young bride fed her husband soup from her own plate with her spoon, unabashed by the publicity; a mother and her two pretty daughters hung about a handsome officer, who must have been newly betrothed to one of the girls; and, the whole family showed a helpless fondness for him, which he did not despise, though he held it in check; the girls dressed alike, and seemed to have for their whole change of costume a difference from time to time in the color of their sleeves.  The Marches believed they had seen the growth of the romance which had eventuated so happily; and they saw other romances which did not in any wise eventuate.  Carlsbad was evidently one of the great marriage marts of middle Europe, where mothers brought their daughters to be admired, and everywhere the flower of life was blooming for the hand of love.  It blew by on all the promenades in dresses and hats as pretty as they could be bought or imagined; but it was chiefly at Pupp’s that it flourished.  For the most part it seemed to flourish in vain, and to be destined to be put by for another season to dream, bulblike, of the coming summer in the quiet of Moldavian and Transylvanian homes.

Perhaps it was oftener of fortunate effect than the spectators knew; but for their own pleasure they would not have had their pang for it less; and March objected to having a more explicit demand upon his sympathy.  “We could have managed,” he said, at the close of their dinner, as he looked compassionately round upon the parterre of young girls, “we could have managed with Burnamy and Miss Triscoe; but to have Mrs. Adding and Kenby launched upon us is too much.  Of course I like Kenby, and if the widow alone were concerned I would give him my blessing:  a wife more or a widow less is not going to disturb the equilibrium of the universe; but—­” He stopped, and then he went on:  “Men and women are well enough.  They complement each other very agreeably, and they have very good times together.  But why should they get in love?—­It is sure to make them uncomfortable to themselves and annoying to others.”  He broke off, and stared about him.  “My dear, this is really charming—­almost as charming as the Posthof.”  The crowd spread from the open vestibule of the hotel and the shelter of its branching pavilion roofs until it was dimmed in the obscurity of the low grove across the way in an ultimate depth where the musicians were giving the afternoon concert.  Between its two stationary divisions moved a current of promenaders, with some such effect as if the colors of a lovely garden should have liquefied and flowed in mingled rose and lilac, pink and yellow, and white and orange, and all the middle tints of modern millinery.  Above on one side were the agreeable bulks of architecture, in the buff and gray of Carlsbad; and far beyond on the other were the upland slopes, with villas and long curves of country roads, belted in with miles of wall.  “It would be about as offensive to have a love-interest that one personally knew about intruded here,” he said, “as to have a two-spanner carriage driven through this crowd.  It ought to be forbidden by the municipality.”