"Indeed I do, Mr. Kenby," said Mrs. March. "I perfectly understand you." "Well, I don't think Mrs. Adding is fit to make the journey with him alone, or to place herself in the best way after she gets to Schevleningen. She's been badly shaken up; she broke down before the doctor; she said she didn't know what to do; I suppose she's frightened--" Kenby stopped again, and March asked, "When is she going?" "To-morrow," said Kenby, and he added, "And now the question is, why shouldn't I go with her?" Mrs. March gave a little start, and looked at her husband, but he said nothing, and Kenby seemed not to have supposed that he would say anything. "I know it would be very American, and all that, but I happen to be an American, and it wouldn't be out of character for me. I suppose," he appealed to Mrs. March, "that it's something I might offer to do if it were from New York to Florida--and I happened to be going there? And I did happen to be going to Holland." "Why, of course, Mr. Kenby," she responded, with such solemnity that March gave way in an outrageous laugh. Kenby laughed, and Mrs. March laughed too, but with an inner note of protest. "Well," Kenby continued, still addressing her, "what I want you to do is to stand by me when I propose it." Mrs. March gathered strength to say, "No, Mr. Kenby, it's your own affair, and you must take the responsibility." "Do you disapprove?" "It isn't the same as it would be at home. You see that yourself." "Well," said Kenby, rising, "I have to arrange about their getting away to-morrow. It won't be easy in this hurly-burly that's coming off." "Give Rose our love; and tell Mrs. Adding that I'll come round and see her to-morrow before she starts." "Oh! I'm afraid you can't, Mrs. March. They're to start at six in the morning." "They are! Then we must go and see them tonight. We'll be there almost as soon as you are." March went up to their rooms with, his wife, and she began on the stairs: "Well, my dear, I hope you realize that your laughing so gave us completely away. And what was there to keep grinning about, all through?" "Nothing but the disingenuous, hypocritical passion of love. It's always the most amusing thing in the world; but to see it trying to pass itself off in poor old Kenby as duty and humanity, and disinterested affection for Rose, was more than I could stand. I don't apologize for laughing; I wanted to yell." His effrontery and his philosophy both helped to save him; and she said from the point where he had side-tracked her mind: "I don't call it disingenuous. He was brutally frank. He's made it impossible to treat the affair with dignity. I want you to leave the whole thing to me, from this out. Now, will you?"