over, I'm not sorry. I always
admired Miss Pasmer, but I've been more and more afraid you were not
suited to each other. Your mother doesn't know you're here?"

"No, sir, I suppose not. Do you think it will distress her?"

"How did your sisters take it?"

Dan gave a rueful laugh. "It seemed to be rather a popular move with
them."

"I will see your mother first," said the father.

He left them when they went into the library after supper, and a little
later Dan and Eunice left Boardman in charge of Minnie there.

He looked after their unannounced withdrawal in comic consciousness.
"It's no use pretending that I'm not a pretty large plurality here," he
said to Minnie.

"Oh, I'm so glad you came!" she cried, with a kindness which was as real
as if it had been more sincere.

"Do you think mother will feel it much?" asked Dan anxiously, as he went
upstairs with Eunice.

"Well, she'll hate to lose a correspondent--such a regular one," said
Eunice, and the affair being so far beyond any other comment, she
laughed the rest of the way to their mother's room.

The whole family had in some degree that foible which affects people who
lead isolated lives; they come to think that they are the only people
who have their virtues; they exaggerate these, and they conceive a
kindness even for the qualities which are not their virtues. Mrs.
Mavering's life was secluded again from the family seclusion, and their
peculiarities were intensified in her. Besides, she had some very
marked peculiarities of her own, and these were also intensified by
the solitude to which she was necessarily left so much. She meditated a
great deal upon the character of her children, and she liked to analyse
and censure it both in her own mind and openly in their presence. She
was very trenchant and definite in these estimates of them; she liked
to ticket them, and then ticket them anew. She explored their ancestral
history on both sides for the origin of their traits, and there were
times when she reduced them in formula to mere congeries of inherited
characteristics. If Eunice was self-willed and despotic, she was just
like her grandmother Mavering; if Minnie was all sentiment and gentle
stubbornness, it was because two aunts of hers, one on either side,
were exactly so; if Dan loved pleasure and beauty, and was sinuous and
uncertain in so many ways, and yet was so kind and faithful and good, as
well as shilly-shallying and undecided, it was because