At the restaurant, where the proprietor obsequiously met the party on the threshold and bowed them into a pretty inner room, with a table set for their supper, Stoller had gained courage to play the host openly.  He appointed General Triscoe to the chief seat; he would have put his daughter next to him, if the girl had not insisted upon Mrs. March’s having the place, and going herself to sit next to March, whom she said she had not been able to speak a word to the whole evening.  But she did not talk a great deal to him; he smiled to find how soon he dropped out of the conversation, and Burnamy, from his greater remoteness across the table, dropped into it.  He really preferred the study of Stoller, whose instinct of a greater worldly quality in the Triscoes interested him; he could see him listening now to what General Triscoe was saying to Mrs. March, and now to what Burnamy was saying to Miss Triscoe; his strong, selfish face, as he turned it on the young people, expressed a mingled grudge and greed that was very curious.

Stoller’s courage, which had come and gone at moments throughout, rose at the end, and while they lingered at the table well on to the hour of ten, he said, in the sort of helpless offence he had with Burnamy, “What’s the reason we can’t all go out tomorrow to that old castle you was talking about?”

“To Engelhaus?  I don’t know any reason, as far as I’m concerned,” answered Burnamy; but he refused the initiative offered him, and Stoller was obliged to ask March: 

“You heard about it?”

“Yes.”  General Triscoe was listening, and March added for him, “It was the hold of an old robber baron; Gustavus Adolphus knocked it down, and it’s very picturesque, I believe.”

“It sounds promising,” said the general.  “Where is it?”

“Isn’t to-morrow our mineral bath?” Mrs. March interposed between her husband and temptation.

“No; the day after.  Why, it’s about ten or twelve miles out on the old postroad that Napoleon took for Prague.”

“Napoleon knew a good road when he saw it,” said the general, and he alone of the company lighted a cigar.  He was decidedly in favor of the excursion, and he arranged for it with Stoller, whom he had the effect of using for his pleasure as if he were doing him a favor.  They were six, and two carriages would take them:  a two-spanner for four, and a one-spanner for two; they could start directly after dinners and get home in time for supper.

Stoller asserted himself to say:  “That’s all right, then.  I want you to be my guests, and I’ll see about the carriages.”  He turned to Burnamy:  “Will you order them?”

“Oh,” said the young fellow, with a sort of dryness, “the portier will get them.”

“I don’t understand why General Triscoe was so willing to accept.  Surely, he can’t like that man!” said Mrs. March to her husband in their own room.

“Oh, I fancy that wouldn’t be essential.  The general seems to me, capable of letting even an enemy serve his turn.  Why didn’t you speak, if you didn’t want to go?”