Her father waited for her to go on, but apparently she was going to leave the word to him, now. He hesitated to take it, but he asked at last with a mildness that seemed to surprise her, "Have you heard anything from him since?"
"No."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know. I told him I could not say what he wished; that I must tell you about it."
The case was less simple than it would once have been for General Triscoe. There was still his affection for his daughter, his wish for her happiness, but this had always been subordinate to his sense of his own interest and comfort, and a question had recently arisen which put his paternal love and duty in a new light. He was no more explicit with himself than other men are, and the most which could ever be said of him without injustice was that in his dependence upon her he would rather have kept his daughter to himself if she could not have been very prosperously married. On the other hand, if he disliked the man for whom she now hardly hid her liking, he was not just then ready to go to extremes concerning him.
"He was very anxious," she went on, "that you should know just how it was. He thinks everything of your judgment and—and—opinion." The general made a consenting noise in his throat. "He said that he did not wish me to 'whitewash' him to you. He didn't think he had done right; he didn't excuse himself, or ask you to excuse him unless you could from the stand-point of a gentleman."
The general made a less consenting noise in his throat, and asked, "How do you look at it, yourself, Agatha?"
"I don't believe I quite understand it; but Mrs. March—"
"Oh, Mrs. March!" the general snorted.
"—says that Mr. March does not think so badly of it as Mr. Burnamy does."