“Oh!” I said vaguely, “I am very glad. Mrs. March felt, as I did, that circumstances had given us a certain obligation in regard to Miss Gage, and we were anxious to discharge it faithfully and to the utmost. We should have written to you, summoned you, before, if we could have supposed—or been sure; but you know these things go on so obscurely, and we acted at the very first possible moment. I wish you to understand that. We talked it over a great deal, and I hope you will believe that we studied throughout—that we were most solicitous from beginning to end for Miss Gage’s happiness, and that if we could have foreseen or imagined—if we could have taken any steps—I trust you will believe—” I was furious at myself for being so confoundedly apologetic, for I was thinking all the time of the bother and affliction we had had with the girl; and there sat that little wooden image accepting my self-inculpations, and apparently demanding more of me; but I could not help going on in the same strain: “We felt especially bound in the matter, from the fact that Mr. Kendricks was a personal friend of ours, whom we are very fond of, and we both are very anxious that you should not suppose that we promoted, or that we were not most vigilant—that we were for a moment forgetful of your rights in such an affair—” I stopped, and Mr. Gage passed his hand across his little meagre, smiling mouth. “Then he is not a connection of yours, Mr. March?” “Bless me, no!” I said in great relief; “we are not so swell as that.” And I tried to give him some notion of Kendricks’s local quality, repeating a list of agglutinated New York surnames to which his was more or less affiliated. They always amuse me, those names, which more than any in the world give the notion of social straining; but I doubt if they affected the imagination of Mr. Gage, either in this way or in the way I meanly meant them to affect him. “And what did you say his business was?” he asked, with that implication of a previous statement on your part which some people think it so clever to make when they question you. I always hate it, and I avenged myself by answering simply, “Bless my soul, he has no business!” and letting him take up the word now or not, as he liked. “Then he is a man of independent means?” I could not resist answering, “Independent means? Kendricks has no means whatever.” But having dealt this blow, I could add, “I believe his mother has some money. They are people who live comfortably.” “Then he has no profession?” asked Mr. Gage, with a little more stringency in his smile. “I don’t know whether you will call it a profession. He is a writer.” “Ah!” Mr. Gage softly breathed. “Does he write for your—paper?” I noted that as to the literary technicalities he seemed not to be much more ignorant than Kendricks’s own family, and I said, tolerantly, “Yes; he writes for our magazine.” “Magazine—yes; I beg your pardon,” he interrupted.