The next morning, after March and General Triscoe had started off upon one of the hill climbs, the young people made her go with them for a walk up the Tepl, as far as the cafe of the Freundschaftsaal.  In the grounds an artist in silhouettes was cutting out the likenesses of people who supposed themselves to have profiles, and they begged Mrs. March to sit for hers.  It was so good that she insisted on Miss Triscoe’s sitting in turn, and then Burnamy.  Then he had the inspiration to propose that they should all three sit together, and it appeared that such a group was within the scope of the silhouettist’s art; he posed them in his little bower, and while he was mounting the picture they took turns, at five kreutzers each, in listening to American tunes played by his Edison phonograph.

Mrs. March felt that all this was weakening her moral fibre; but she tried to draw the line at letting Burnamy keep the group.  “Why not?” he pleaded.

“You oughtn’t to ask,” she returned.  “You’ve no business to have Miss Triscoe’s picture, if you must know.”

“But you’re there to chaperon us!” he persisted.

He began to laugh, and they all laughed when she said, “You need a chaperon who doesn’t lose her head, in a silhouette.”  But it seemed useless to hold out after that, and she heard herself asking, “Shall we let him keep it, Miss Triscoe?”

Burnamy went off to his work with Stoller, carrying the silhouette with him, and she kept on with Miss Triscoe to her hotel.  In turning from the gate after she parted with the girl she found herself confronted with Mrs. Adding and Rose.  The ladies exclaimed at each other in an astonishment from which they had to recover before they could begin to talk, but from the first moment Mrs. March perceived that Mrs. Adding had something to say.  The more freely to say it she asked Mrs. March into her hotel, which was in the same street with the pension of the Triscoes, and she let her boy go off about the exploration of Carlsbad; he promised to be back in an hour.

“Well, now what scrape are you in?” March asked when his wife came home, and began to put off her things, with signs of excitement which he could not fail to note.  He was lying down after a long tramp, and he seemed very comfortable.

His question suggested something of anterior import, and she told him about the silhouettes, and the advantage the young people had taken of their power over her through their knowledge of her foolish behavior at the ball.

He said, lazily:  “They seem to be working you for all you’re worth.  Is that it?”

“No; there is something worse.  Something’s happened which throws all that quite in the shade.  Mrs. Adding is here.”

“Mrs. Adding?” he repeated, with a dimness for names which she would not allow was growing on him.

“Don’t be stupid, dear!  Mrs. Adding, who sat opposite Mr. Kenby on the Norumbia.  The mother of the nice boy.”