“I don’t know where he is, Mrs. March.  I haven’t heard a word from him since that night in Carlsbad.  I expected—­I didn’t know but you—­”

Mrs. March shook her head.  She treated the fact skillfully as something to be regretted simply because it would be such a relief to Burnamy to know how Mr. Stoller now felt.  Of course they could reach him somehow; you could always get letters to people in Europe, in the end; and, in fact, it was altogether probable that he was that very instant in Wurzburg; for if the New York-Paris Chronicle had wanted him to write up the Wagner operas, it would certainly want him to write up the manoeuvres.  She established his presence in Wurzburg by such an irrefragable chain of reasoning that, at a knock outside, she was just able to kelp back a scream, while she ran to open the door.  It was not Burnamy, as in compliance with every nerve it ought to have been, but her husband, who tried to justify his presence by saying that they were all waiting for her and Miss Triscoe, and asked when they were coming.

She frowned him silent, and then shut herself outside with him long enough to whisper, “Say she’s got a headache, or anything you please; but don’t stop talking here with me, or I shall go wild.”  She then shut herself in again, with the effect of holding him accountable for the whole affair.

LVI.

General Triscoe could not keep his irritation, at hearing that his daughter was not coming, out of the excuses he made to Mrs. Adding; he said again and again that it must seem like a discourtesy to her.  She gayly disclaimed any such notion; she would not hear of putting off their excursion to another day; it had been raining just long enough to give them a reasonable hope of a few hours’ drought, and they might not have another dry spell for weeks.  She slipped off her jacket after they started, and gave it to Kenby, but she let General Triscoe hold her umbrella over her, while he limped beside her.  She seemed to March, as he followed with Rose, to be playing the two men off against each other, with an ease which he wished his wife could be there to see, and to judge aright.

They crossed by the Old Bridge, which is of the earliest years of the seventh century, between rows of saints whose statues surmount the piers.  Some are bishops as well as saints; one must have been at Rome in his day, for he wore his long thick beard in the fashion of Michelangelo’s Moses.  He stretched out toward the passers two fingers of blessing and was unaware of the sparrow which had lighted on them and was giving him the effect of offering it to the public admiration.  Squads of soldiers tramping by turned to look and smile, and the dull faces of citizens lighted up at the quaint sight.  Some children stopped and remained very quiet, not to scare away the bird; and a cold-faced, spiritual-looking priest paused among them as if doubting whether to rescue the absent-minded bishop from a situation derogatory to his dignity; but he passed on, and then the sparrow suddenly flew off.