"I could believe, after your behavior to that poor woman about her son in
Jersey City, you're really capable of it."

"What comprehensive inculpation! I had forgotten about that poor woman."




LI.

The letters which March had asked his Nuremberg banker to send them came
just as they were leaving Ansbach. The landlord sent them down to the
station, and Mrs. March opened them in the train, and read them first so
that she could prepare him if there were anything annoying in them, as
well as indulge her livelier curiosity.

"They're from both the children," she said, without waiting for him to
ask. "You can look at them later. There's a very nice letter from Mrs.
Adding to me, and one from dear little Rose for you." Then she hesitated,
with her hand on a letter faced down in her lap. "And there's one from
Agatha Triscoe, which I wonder what you'll think of." She delayed again,
and then flashed it open before him, and waited with a sort of
impassioned patience while he read it.

He read it, and gave it back to her. "There doesn't seem to be very much
in it."

"That's it! Don't you think I had a right to there being something in it,
after all I did for her?"