Kendricks laughed and I jeered at this complex characterisation. “You make me impatient to judge for myself,” he said. “Will you go with me to call upon them this evening?” asked Mrs. March. “I shall be delighted. And you can count upon me to aid and abet you in your generous conspiracy, Mrs. March, to the best of my ability. There’s nothing I should like better than to help you—” “Throw ‘dust in her beautiful eyes,’” I quoted. “Not at all,” said my wife. “But to spread a beatific haze over everything, so that as long as she stays in Saratoga she shall see life rose-colour. Of course you may say that it’s a kind of deception—” “Not at all!” cried the young fellow in his turn. “We will make it reality. Then there will be no harm in it.” “What a jesuitical casuist! You had better read what Cardinal Newman says in his _Apologia_ about lying, young man.” Neither of them minded me, for just then there was a stir of drapery round the corner of the piazza from where we were sitting, and the next moment Mrs. Deering and Miss Gage showed themselves. “We were just talking of you,” said Mrs. March. “May I present our friend Mr. Kendricks, Mrs. Deering? And Miss Gage?” At sight of the young man, so well dressed and good-looking, who bowed so prettily to her, and then bustled to place chairs for them, a certain cloud seemed to lift from Miss Gage’s beautiful face, and to be at least partly broken on Mrs. Deering’s visage. I began to talk to the girl, and she answered in good spirits, and with more apparent interest in my conversation than she had yet shown, while Kendricks very properly devoted himself to the other ladies. Both his eyes were on them, but I felt that he had a third somehow upon her, and that the smallest fact of her beauty and grace was not lost upon him. I knew that her rich, tender voice was doing its work, too, through the commonplaces she vouchsafed to me. There was a moment when I saw him lift a questioning eyebrow upon Mrs. March, and saw her answer with a fleeting frown of affirmation. I cannot tell just how it was that, before he left us, his chair was on the other side of Miss Gage’s, and I was eliminated from the dialogue. He did not stay too long. There was another tableau of him on foot, taking leave of Mrs. March, with a high hand-shake, which had then lately come in, and which I saw the girl note, and then bowing to her and to Mrs. Deering. “Don’t forget,” my wife called after him, with a ready invention not lost on his quick intelligence, “that you’re going to the concert with us after tea. Eight o’clock, remember.” “You may be sure I shall remember _that_,” he returned gaily. IX THE countenances of the ladies fell instantly when he was gone. “Mrs. March,” said Mrs. Deering, with a nervous tremor, “did Mr. March get us those rooms at the Grand Union?”