Nearly ten days had passed before he left his room, and it was not till then that he clearly saw how far affairs had gone with his daughter and Burnamy, though even then his observance seemed to have anticipated theirs.  He found them in a quiet acceptance of the fortune which had brought them together, so contented that they appeared to ask nothing more of it.  The divine patience and confidence of their youth might sometimes have had almost the effect of indifference to a witness who had seen its evolution from the moods of the first few days of their reunion in Weimar.  To General Triscoe, however, it looked like an understanding which had been made without reference to his wishes, and had not been directly brought to his knowledge.

“Agatha,” he said, after due note of a gay contest between her and Burnamy over the pleasure and privilege of ordering his supper sent to his room when he had gone back to it from his first afternoon in the open air, “how long is that young man going to stay in Weimar?”

“Why, I don’t know!” she answered, startled from her work of beating the sofa pillows into shape, and pausing with one of them in her hand.  “I never asked him.”  She looked down candidly into his face where he sat in an easy-chair waiting for her arrangement of the sofa.  “What makes you ask?”

He answered with another question.  “Does he know that we had thought of staying here?”

“Why, we’ve always talked of that, haven’t we?  Yes, he knows it.  Didn’t you want him to know it, papa?  You ought to have begun on the ship, then.  Of course I’ve asked him what sort of place it was.  I’m sorry if you didn’t want me to.”

“Have I said that?  It’s perfectly easy to push on to Paris.  Unless—­”

“Unless what?” Agatha dropped the pillow, and listened respectfully.  But in spite of her filial attitude she could not keep her youth and strength and courage from quelling the forces of the elderly man.

He said querulously, “I don’t see why you take that tone with me.  You certainly know what I mean.  But if you don’t care to deal openly with me, I won’t ask you.”  He dropped his eyes from her face, and at the same time a deep blush began to tinge it, growing up from her neck to her forehead.  “You must know—­you’re not a child,” he continued, still with averted eyes, “that this sort of thing can’t go on...  It must be something else, or it mustn’t be anything at all.  I don’t ask you for your confidence, and you know that I’ve never sought to control you.”

This was not the least true, but Agatha answered, either absently or provisionally, “No.”

“And I don’t seek to do so now.  If you have nothing that you wish to tell me—­”

He waited, and after what seemed a long time, she asked as if she had not heard him, “Will you lie down a little before your supper, papa?”

“I will lie down when I feel like it,” he answered.  “Send August with the supper; he can look after me.”