smiling radiantly, and as the girl smiled she kept turning herself from
the waist up, and slanting her face from this side to that, as if to make
sure that every one saw her smiling.

Mrs. March felt her husband's gaze following her own, and she had just
time to press her finger firmly on his arm and reduce his cry of
astonishment to the hoarse whisper in which he gasped, "Good gracious!
It's the pivotal girl!"

At the same moment the girl rose with her mother, and with the young man,
who had risen too, came directly toward the Marches on their way out of
the place without noticing them, though Burnamy passed so near that Mrs.
March could almost have touched him.

She had just strength to say, "Well, my dear! That was the cut direct."

She said this in order to have her husband reassure her. "Nonsense! He
never saw us. Why didn't you speak to him?"

"Speak to him? I never shall speak to him again. No! This is the last of
Mr. Burnamy for me. I shouldn't have minded his not recognizing us, for,
as you say, I don't believe he saw us; but if he could go back to such a
girl as that, and flirt with her, after Miss Triscoe, that's all I wish
to know of him. Don't you try to look him up, Basil! I'm glad-yes, I'm
glad he doesn't know how Stoller has come to feel about him; he deserves
to suffer, and I hope he'll keep on suffering: You were quite right, my
dear--and it shows how true your instinct is in such things (I don't call
it more than instinct)--not to tell him what Stoller said, and I don't
want you ever should."