“Ah, I don’t think it’s a thing he’ll like to speak of in any case,” said March.

Stoller left him, at the corner they had reached, as abruptly as he had joined him, and March hurried back to his wife, and told her what had just passed between him and Stoller.

She broke out, “Well, I am surprised at you, my dear!  You have always accused me of suspecting people, and attributing bad motives; and here you’ve refused even to give the poor man the benefit of the doubt.  He merely wanted to save his savage pride with you, and that’s all he wants to do with Burnamy.  How could it hurt the poor boy to know that Stoller doesn’t blame him?  Why should you refuse to give his message to Burnamy?  I don’t want you to ridicule me for my conscience any more, Basil; you’re twice as bad as I ever was.  Don’t you think that a person can ever expiate an offence?  I’ve often heard you say that if any one owned his fault, he put it from him, and it was the same as if it hadn’t been; and hasn’t Burnamy owned up over and over again?  I’m astonished at you, dearest.”

March was in fact somewhat astonished at himself in the light of her reasoning; but she went on with some sophistries that restored him to his self-righteousness.

“I suppose you think he has interfered with Stoller’s political ambition, and injured him in that way.  Well, what if he has?  Would it be a good thing to have a man like that succeed in politics?  You’re always saying that the low character of our politicians is the ruin of the country; and I’m sure,” she added, with a prodigious leap over all the sequences, “that Mr. Stoller is acting nobly; and it’s your duty to help him relieve Burnamy’s mind.”  At the laugh he broke into she hastened to say, “Or if you won’t, I hope you’ll not object to my doing so, for I shall, anyway!”

She rose as if she were going to begin at once, in spite of his laughing; and in fact she had already a plan for coming to Stoller’s assistance by getting at Burnamy through Miss Triscoe, whom she suspected of knowing where he was.  There had been no chance for them to speak of him either that morning or the evening before, and after a great deal of controversy with herself in her husband’s presence she decided to wait till they came naturally together the next morning for the walk to the Capuchin Church on the hill beyond the river, which they had agreed to take.  She could not keep from writing a note to Miss Triscoe begging her to be sure to come, and hinting that she had something very important to speak of.

She was not sure but she had been rather silly to do this, but when they met the girl confessed that she had thought of giving up the walk, and might not have come except for Mrs. March’s note.  She had come with Rose, and had left him below with March; Mrs. Adding was coming later with Kenby and General Triscoe.

Mrs. March lost no time in telling her the great news; and if she had been in doubt before of the girl’s feeling for Burnamy she was now in none.  She had the pleasure of seeing her flush with hope, and then the pain which was also a pleasure, of seeing her blanch with dismay.