In the mean time Mrs. March and Miss Triscoe were discussing another
offence of Burnamy's.
"It wasn't," said the girl, excitedly, after a plunge through all the
minor facts to the heart of the matter, "that he hadn't a perfect right
to do it, if he thought I didn't care for him. I had refused him at
Carlsbad, and I had forbidden him to speak to me about--on the subject.
But that was merely temporary, and he ought to have known it. He ought to
have known that I couldn't accept him, on the spur of the moment, that
way; and when he had come back, after going away in disgrace, before he
had done anything to justify himself. I couldn't have kept my
self-respect; and as it was I had the greatest difficulty; and he ought
to have seen it. Of course he said afterwards that he didn't see it. But
when--when I found out that SHE had been in Weimar, and all that time,
while I had been suffering in Carlsbad and Wurzburg, and longing to see
him--let him know how I was really feeling--he was flirting with
that--that girl, then I saw that he was a false nature, and I determined
to put an end to everything. And that is what I did; and I shall always
think I--did right--and--"
The rest was lost in Agatha's handkerchief, which she put up to her eyes.
Mrs. March watched her from her pillow keeping the girl's unoccupied hand
in her own, and softly pressing it till the storm was past sufficiently
to allow her to be heard.
Then she said, "Men are very strange--the best of them. And from the very
fact that he was disappointed, he would be all the more apt to rush into
a flirtation with somebody else."
Miss Triscoe took down her handkerchief from a face that had certainly
not been beautified by grief. "I didn't blame him for the flirting; or
not so much. It was his keeping it from me afterwards. He ought to have
told me the very first instant we were engaged. But he didn't. He let it
go on, and if I hadn't happened on that bouquet I might never have known
anything about it. That is what I mean by--a false nature. I wouldn't
have minded his deceiving me; but to let me deceive myself--Oh, it was
too much!"
Agatha hid her face in her handkerchief again. She was perching on the
edge of the berth, and Mrs. March said, with a glance, which she did not
see, toward the sofa, "I'm afraid that's rather a hard seat for you.
"Oh, no, thank you! I'm perfectly comfortable--I like it--if you don't
mind?"
Mrs. March pressed her hand for answer, and after another little delay,
sighed and said, "They are not like us, and we cannot help it. They are
more temporizing."
"How do you mean?" Agatha unmasked again.
"They can bear to keep things better than we can, and they trust to time
to bring them right, or to come right of themselves."
"I don't think Mr. March would trust things to come right of themselves!"
said Agatha in indignant accusal of Mrs. March's sincerity.
"Ah, that's just what he would do, my dear, and has done, all along; and
I don't believe we could have lived through without it: we should have
quarrelled ourselves into the grave!"
"Mrs. March!"
"Yes, indeed. I don't mean that he would ever deceive me. But he would
let things go on, and hope that somehow they would come right without any
fuss."
"Do you mean that he would let anybody deceive themselves?"
"I'm afraid he would--if he thought it would come right. It used to be a
terrible trial to me; and it is yet, at times when I don't remember that
he means nothing but good and kindness by it. Only the other day in
Ansbach--how long ago it seems!--he let a poor old woman give him her
son's address in Jersey City, and allowed her to believe he would look
him up when we got back and tell him we had seen her. I don't believe,
unless I keep right round after him, as we say in New England, that he'll
ever go near the man."