I said to myself that of course they believed Saratoga was still that centre of American fashion which it once was, and that they came and went every summer, probably in the belief that they saw a great deal of social gaiety there. This made me think, by a natural series of transitions, of the persons of my American idyl, and I looked about the pavilion everywhere for them without discovering, till the last, that they were just behind me. I found the fact touching. They had not wished to be in any wise beholden to me, and had even tried to reject my friendly readiness to know them better; but they had probably sought my vicinity in a sense of their loneliness and helplessness, which they hoped I would not divine, but which I divined instantly. Still, I thought it best not to show any consciousness of them, and we sat through the first part of the concert without taking notice of one another. Then the man leaned forward and touched me on the shoulder. “Will you let me take your programme a minute?” “Why, certainly,” said I. He took it, and after a vague glance at it he passed it to his wife, who gave it in turn to the young girl. She studied it very briefly, and then, after a questioning look, offered it back to me. “Won’t you keep it?” I entreated. “I’ve quite done with it.” “Oh, thank you,” she answered in her tender voice, and she and the wife looked hard at the man, whom they seemed to unite in pushing forward by that means. He hemmed, and asked, “Have you been in Saratoga much?” “Why, yes,” I said; “rather a good deal. My wife and I have been here three or four summers.” At the confession of my married state, which this statement implicated, the women exchanged a glance, I fancied, of triumph, as if they had been talking about me, and I had now confirmed the ground they had taken concerning me. Then they joined in goading the man on again with their eyes. “Which hotel,” he asked, “should you say had the most going on?” The young girl and the wife transferred their gaze to me, with an intensified appeal in it. The man looked away with a certain shame—the shame of a man who feels that his wife has made him make an ass of himself. I tried to treat his question, by the quantity and quality of my answer, as one of the most natural things in the world; and I probably deceived them all by this effort, though I am sure that I was most truthful and just concerning the claims of the different hotels to be the centre of excitement. I thought I had earned the right to ask at the end, “Are you stopping at the Grand Union?” “No,” he said; and he mentioned one of the smaller hotels, which depend upon the great houses for the entertainment of their guests. “Are you there?” he asked, meaning the Grand Union.