e, silenced Mavering. He set his lips and bowed, and they
parted. She turned upon her way, and he kept the path which she had been
going.

It was not the hour when the piazzas were very full, and she slipped
into the dim hotel corridor undetected, or at least undetained. She
flung into her room, and confronted her mother.

Mrs. Pasmer was there looking into a trunk that had overflowed from her
own chamber. "What is the matter?" she said to her daughter's excited
face.

"Mr. Mavering--"

"Well?"

"And I refused him."

Mrs. Pasmer was one of those ladies who in any finality have a keen
retrovision of all the advantages of a different conclusion. She had
been thinking, since she told Dan Mavering which way Alice had gone to
walk, that if he were to speak to her now, and she were to accept him,
it would involve a great many embarrassing consequences; but she had
consoled herself with the probability that he would not speak so soon
after the effects of last night, but would only try at the furthest
to make his peace with Alice. Since he had spoken, though, and she had
refused him, Mrs. Pasmer instantly saw all the pleasant things that
would have followed in another event. "Refused him?" she repeated
provisionally, while she gathered herself for a full exploration of all
the facts.

"Yes, mamma; and I can't talk about it. I wish never to hear his name
again, or to see him, or to speak to him."

"Why, of course not," said Mrs. Pasmer, with a fine smile, from the
vantage-ground of her superior years, "if you've refused him." She left
the trunk which she had been standing over, and sat down, while Alice
swept to and fro before her excitedly. "But why did you refuse him, my
dear?"

"Why? Because he's detestable--perfectly ignoble."

Her mother probably knew how to translate these exalted expressions into
the more accurate language of maturer life. "Do you mean last night?"

"Last night?" cried Alice tragically. "No. Why should I care for last
night?"

"Then I don't understand what you mean," retorted Mrs. Pasmer. "What did
he say?" she demanded, with authority.

"Mamma, I can't talk about it--I won't."

"But you must, Alice. It's your duty. Of course I must know about it.
What did he say?"

Alice walked up and down the room with her lips firmly closed--like
Mavering's lips, it occurred to her; and then she opened them, but
without speaking.

"What did he say?" persisted her mother, and her persistence had i