little out of sorts last
night?" she queried leadingly.

"Yes," said Mavering fervently. "And about her--her writing to me."

"Writing to you?" Mrs. Pasmer was going to ask, when Dan gave her the
letter.

"I don't know whether I ought to show it, but I must. I must have your
help, and I can't, unless you understand the case."

Mrs. Pasmer had begun to read the note. It explained what the girl
herself had refused to give any satisfactory reason for--her early
retirement from the reception, her mysterious disappearance into her own
room on reaching home, and her resolute silence on the way. Mrs.
Pasmer had known that there must be some trouble with Dan, and she had
suspected that Alice was vexed with him on account of those women;
but it was beyond her cheerful imagination that she should go to such
lengths in her resentment. She could conceive of her wishing to punish
him, to retaliate her suffering on him; but to renounce him for it
was another thing; and she did not attribute to her daughter any other
motive than she would have felt herself. It was always this way with
Mrs. Pasmer: she followed her daughter accurately up to a certain point;
beyond that she did not believe the girl knew herself what she meant;
and perhaps she was not altogether wrong. Girlhood is often a turmoil
of wild impulses, ignorant exaltations, mistaken ideals, which really
represent no intelligent purpose, and come from disordered nerves,
ill-advised reading, and the erroneous perspective of inexperience. Mrs.
Pasmer felt this, and she was tempted to break into a laugh over Alice's
heroics; but she preferred to keep a serious countenance, partly because
she did not feel the least seriously. She was instantly resolved not to
let this letter accomplish anything more than Dan's temporary abasement,
and she would have preferred to shorten this to the briefest moment
possible. She liked him, and she was convinced that Alice could never do
better, if half so well. She would now have preferred to treat him with
familiar confidence, to tell him that she had no idea of Alice's writing
him that nonsensical letter, and he was not to pay the least attention
to it; for of course it meant nothing; but another principle of her
complex nature came into play, and she silently folded the note and
returned it to Dan, trembling before her.

"Well?" he quavered.

"Well," returned Mrs. Pasmer judicially, while she enjoyed his tremor,
whose needlessness inward