she should not be happy unless he required this of her. She
said that they ought each to find out what was the most distasteful
thing which they could mutually require, and then do it; she asked him
to try to think what she most hated, and let her do that for him; as for
her, she only asked to ask nothing of him.

Mavering could not worship enough this nobility of soul in her, and
he celebrated it to Boardman with the passionate need of imparting
his rapture which a lover feel. Boardman acquiesced in silence, with a
glance of reserved sarcasm, or contented himself with laconic satire
of his friend's general condition, and avoided any comment that might
specifically apply to the points Dan made. Alice allowed him to have
this confidant, and did not demand of him a report of all he said to
Boardman. A main fact of their love, she said, must be their utter faith
in each other. She had her own confidante, and the disparity of years
between her and Miss Cotton counted for nothing in the friendship which
their exchange of trust and sympathy cemented. Miss Cotton, in the
freshness of her sympathy and the ideality of her inexperience, was
in fact younger than Alice, at whose feet, in the things of soul and
character, she loved to sit. She never said to her what she believed:
that a girl of her exemplary principles, a nature conscious of such
noble ideals, so superior to other girls, who in her place would be
given up to the happiness of the moment, and indifferent to the sense of
duty to herself and to others, was sacrificed to a person of Mavering's
gay, bright nature and trivial conception of life. She did not deny
his sweetness; that was perhaps the one saving thing about him; and she
confessed that he simply adored Alice; that counted for everything, and
it was everything in his favour that he could appreciate such a girl.
She hoped, she prayed, that Alice might never realise how little depth
he had; that she might go through life and never suspect it. If she
did so, then they might be happy together to the end, or at least Alice
might never know she was unhappy.

Miss Cotton never said these things in so many words; it is doubtful if
she ever said them in any form of words; with her sensitive anxiety not
to do injustice to any one, she took Dan's part against those who viewed
the engagement as she allowed it to appear only to her secret heart. She
defended him the more eagerly because she felt that it was for Alice's
sak