“About Stoller and his daughters, and Mrs. Adding and Rose and Kenby and General Triscoe—­and Agatha.”

“Very well.  That’s what I call shabby.  Don’t ever talk to me again about the inconsistencies of women.  But now there’s something perfectly fearful.”

“What is it?”

“A letter from Miss Triscoe came after you were gone, asking us to find rooms in some hotel for her and her father to-morrow.  He isn’t well, and they’re coming.  And I’ve telegraphed them to come here.  Now what do you say?”

LXII.

They could see no way out of the trouble, and Mrs. March could not resign herself to it till her husband suggested that she should consider it providential.  This touched the lingering superstition in which she had been ancestrally taught to regard herself as a means, when in a very tight place, and to leave the responsibility with the moral government of the universe.  As she now perceived, it had been the same as ordered that they should see Burnamy under such conditions in the afternoon that they could not speak to him, and hear where he was staying; and in an inferior degree it had been the same as ordered that March should see him in the evening and tell him everything, so that she should know just how to act when she saw him in the morning.  If he could plausibly account for the renewal of his flirtation with Miss Elkins, or if he seemed generally worthy apart from that, she could forgive him.

It was so pleasant when he came in at breakfast with his well-remembered smile, that she did not require from him any explicit defence.  While they talked she was righting herself in an undercurrent of drama with Miss Triscoe, and explaining to her that they could not possibly wait over for her and her father in Weimar, but must be off that day for Berlin, as they had made all their plans.  It was not easy, even in drama where one has everything one’s own way, to prove that she could not without impiety so far interfere with the course of Providence as to prevent Miss Triscoe’s coming with her father to the same hotel where Burnamy was staying.  She contrived, indeed, to persuade her that she had not known he was staying there when she telegraphed them where to come, and that in the absence of any open confidence from Miss Triscoe she was not obliged to suppose that his presence would be embarrassing.

March proposed leaving her with Burnamy while he went up into the town and interviewed the house of Schiller, which he had not done yet; and as soon as he got himself away she came to business, breaking altogether from the inner drama with Miss Triscoe and devoting herself to Burnamy.  They had already got so far as to have mentioned the meeting with the Triscoes in Wurzburg, and she said:  “Did Mr. March tell you they were coming here?  Or, no!  We hadn’t heard then.  Yes, they are coming to-morrow.  They may be going to stay some time.  She talked of Weimar when we first spoke of Germany on the ship.”  Burnamy said nothing, and she suddenly added, with a sharp glance, “They wanted us to get them rooms, and we advised their coming to this house.”  He started very satisfactorily, and “Do you think they would be comfortable, here?” she pursued.