was that measure of truth in the words which silences; no one could find just the terms of refutation.
“Well,” said Kenby at last, “it's a good thing there are so many lines to Europe. We've still got the right to emigrate.”
“Yes, but even there we don't escape the abuse of our infamous newspapers for exercising a man's right to live where he chooses. And there is no country in Europe—except Turkey, or Spain—that isn't a better home for an honest man than the United States.”
The Ohioan had once before cleared his throat as if he were going to speak. Now, he leaned far enough forward to catch Triscoe's eye, and said, slowly and distinctly: “I don't know just what reason you have to feel as you do about the country. I feel differently about it myself—perhaps because I fought for it.”
At first, the others were glad of this arrogance; it even seemed an answer; but Burnamy saw Miss Triscoe's cheek, flush, and then he doubted its validity.
Triscoe nervously crushed a biscuit in his hand, as if to expend a violent impulse upon it. He said, coldly, “I was speaking from that stand-point.”
The Ohioan shrank back in his seat, and March felt sorry for him, though he had put himself in the wrong. His old hand trembled beside his plate, and his head shook, while his lips formed silent words; and his shy wife was sharing his pain and shame.
Kenby began to talk about the stop which the Norumbia was to make at Cherbourg, and about what hour the next day they should all be in Cuxhaven. Miss Triscoe said they had never come on the Hanseatic Line before, and asked several questions. Her father did not speak again, and after a little while he rose without waiting for her to make the move from table; he had punctiliously deferred to her hitherto. Eltwin rose at the same time, and March feared that he might be going to provoke another defeat, in some way.
Eltwin lifted his voice, and said, trying to catch Triscoe's eye, “I think I ought to beg your pardon, sir. I do beg your pardon.”
March perceived that Eltwin wished to make the offer of his reparation as distinct as his aggression had been; and now he quaked for Triscoe, whose daughter he saw glance apprehensively at her father as she swayed aside to let the two men come together.
“That is all right, Colonel—”
“Major,” Eltwin conscientiously interposed.
“Major,” Triscoe bowed; and he put out his hand and grasped the hand which had been tremulously rising toward him. “There can't be any doubt of what we did, no matter what we've got.”
“No, no!” said the other, eagerly. “That was what I meant, sir. I don't think as you do; but I believe that a man who helped to save the country has a right to think what he pleases about it.”
Triscoe said, “That is all right, my dear sir. May I ask your regiment?”
The Marches let the old fellows walk away together, followed by the wife of the one and the daughter of the other. They saw the young girl making some graceful overtures of speech to the elder woman as they went.
“That was rather fine, my dear,” said Mrs. March.
“Well, I don't know. It was a little too dramatic, wasn't it? It wasn't what I should have expected of real life.”
“Oh, you spoil everything! If that's the spirit you're going through Europe in!”
“It isn't. As soon as I touch European soil I shall reform.”
XVI.
That was not the first time General Triscoe had silenced question of his opinions with the argument he had used upon Eltwin, though he was seldom able to use it so aptly. He always found that people suffered, his belief in our national degeneration much more readily when they knew that he had left a diplomatic position in Europe (he had gone abroad as secretary of a minor legation) to come home and fight for the Union. Some millions of other men had gone into the war from the varied motives which impelled men at that time; but he was aware that he had distinction, as a man of property and a man of family, in doing so. His family had improved as time passed, and it was now so old that back of his grandfather it was lost in antiquity. This ancestor had retired from the sea and become a merchant in his native Rhode Island port, where his son established himself as a physician, and married the daughter of a former slave-trader whose social position was the highest in the place; Triscoe liked to mention his maternal grandfather when he wished a listener to realize just how anomalous his part in a war against slavery was; it heightened the effect of his pose.
He fought gallantly through the war, and he was brevetted Brigadier-General at the close. With this honor, and with the wound which caused an almost imperceptible limp in his gait, he won the heart of a rich New York girl, and her father set him up in a business, which was not long in going to pieces in his hands. Then the young couple went to live in Paris, where their daughter was born, and where the mother died when the child was ten years old. A little later his father-in-law died, and Triscoe returned to New York, where he found the fortune which his daughter had inherited was much less than he somehow thought he had a right to expect.
The income from her fortune was enough to live on, and he did not go back to Paris, where, in fact, things were not so much to his mind under the Republic as they had been under the Second Empire. He was still willing to do something for his country, however, and he allowed his name to be used on a citizen's ticket in his district; but his provision-man was sent to Congress instead. Then he retired to Rhode Island and attempted to convert his shore property into a watering-place; but after being attractively plotted and laid out with streets and sidewalks, it allured no one to build on it except the birds and the chipmonks, and he came back to New York, where his daughter had remained in school.
One of her maternal aunts made her a coming-out tea, after she left school; and she entered upon a series of dinners, dances, theatre parties, and receptions of all kinds; but the tide of fairy gold pouring through her fingers left no engagement-ring on them. She had no duties, but she seldom got out of humor with her pleasures; she had some odd tastes of her own, and in a society where none but the most serious books were ever seriously mentioned she was rather fond of good ones, and had romantic ideas of a life that she vaguely called bohemian. Her character was never tested by anything more trying than the fear that her father might take her abroad to live; he had taken her abroad several times for the summer.
The dreaded trial did not approach for several years after she had ceased to be a bud; and then it came when her father was again willing to serve his country in diplomacy, either at the Hague, or at Brussels, or even at Berne. Reasons of political geography prevented his appointment anywhere, but General Triscoe having arranged his affairs for going abroad on the mission he had expected, decided to go without it. He was really very fit for both of the offices he had sought, and so far as a man can deserve public place by public service, he had deserved it. His pessimism was uncommonly well grounded, and if it did not go very deep, it might well have reached the bottom of his nature.
His daughter had begun to divine him at the early age when parents suppose themselves still to be mysteries to their children. She did not think it necessary ever to explain him to others; perhaps she would not have found it possible; and now after she parted from Mrs. Eltwin and went to sit down beside Mrs. March she did not refer to her father. She said how sweet she had found the old lady from Ohio; and what sort of place did Mrs. March suppose it was where Mrs. Eltwin lived? They seemed to have everything there, like
