eekly "Will you let me pass, mamma? My head aches."

Mrs. Pasmer, whose easy triumphs in so many difficult circumstances kept
her nearly always in good temper, let herself go, at these words, in
vexation very uncommon with her. "Indeed I shall not!" she retorted.
"And you will please sit down here and tell me what you mean by
dismissing Mr. Mavering. I'm tired of your whims and caprices."

"I can't talk," began the girl stubbornly.

"Yes, I think you can," said her mother. "At any rate, I can. Now what
is it all?"

"Perhaps this letter, will explain," said Alice, continuing to dignify
her enforced submission with a tone of unabated hauteur; and she gave
her mother Mrs. Mavering's letter, which Dan had mechanically restored
to her.

Mrs. Pasmer read it, not only without indignation, but apparently
without displeasure. But, she understood perfectly what the trouble was,
when she looked up and asked, cheerfully, "Well?"

"Well!" repeated Alice, with a frown of astonishment. "Don't you see
that he's promised us one thing and her another, and that he's false to
both?"

"I don't know," said Mrs. Pasmer, recovering her good-humour in view of
a situation that she felt herself able to cope with. "Of course he has
to temporise, to manage a little. She's an invalid, and of course she's
very exacting. He has to humour her. How do you know he has promised
her? He hasn't promised us."

"Hasn't promised us?" Alice gasped.

"No. He's simply fallen in with what we've said. It's because he's
so sweet and yielding, and can't bear to refuse. I can understand it
perfectly."

"Then if he hasn't promised us, he's deceived us all the more
shamefully, for he's made us think he had."

"He hasn't me," said Mrs. Pasmer, smiling at the stormy virtue in her
daughter's face. "And what if you should go home awhile with him--for
the summer, say? It couldn't last longer, much; and it wouldn't hurt us
to wait. I suppose he hoped for something of that kind."

"Oh, it isn't that," groaned the girl, in a kind of bewilderment. "I
could have gone there with him joyfully, and lived all my days, if he'd
only been frank with me."

"Oh no, you couldn't," said her mother, with cosy security. "When it
comes to it, you don't like giving up any more than other people. It's
very hard for you to give up; he sees that--he knows it, and he doesn't
really like to ask any sort of sacrifice from you. He's afraid of you."

"Don't I know that?" demanded Alic