XLVII.

In Boston the rumour of Dan's broken engagement was followed promptly
by a denial of it; both the rumour and the denial were apparently
authoritative; but it gives the effect of a little greater sagacity to
distrust rumours of all kinds, and most people went to bed, after the
teas and dinners and receptions and clubs at which the fact was first
debated, in the self-persuasion that it was not so. The next day they
found the rumour still persistent; the denial was still in the air
too, but it seemed weaker; at the end of the third day it had become a
question as to which broke the engagement, and why; by the end of a week
it was known that Alice had broken the engagement, but the reason could
not be ascertained.

This was not for want of asking, more or less direct. Pasmer, of course,
went and came at his club with perfect immunity. Men are quite as
curious as women, but they set business bounds to their curiosity, and
do not dream of passing these. With women who have no business of their
own, and can not quell themselves with the reflection that this thing
or that is not their affair, there is no question so intimate that they
will not put it to some other woman; perhaps it is not so intimate, or
perhaps it will not seem so; at any rate, they chance it. Mrs. Pasmer
was given every opportunity to explain the facts to the ladies whom
she met, and if she was much afflicted by Alice's behaviour, she had a
measure of consolation in using her skill to baffle the research of her
acquaintance. After each encounter of the kind she had the pleasure of
reflecting that absolutely nothing more than she meant had become known.
The case never became fully known through her; it was the girl herself
who told it to Miss Cotton in one of those moments of confidence which
are necessary to burdened minds; and it is doubtful if more than two or
three people ever clearly understood it; most preferred one or other of
several mistaken versions which society finally settled down to.

The paroxysm of self-doubt, almost self-accusal, in which Alice came to
Miss Cotton, moved the latter to the deepest sympathy, and left her with
misgivings which became an intolerable anguish to her conscience. The
child was so afflicted at what she had done, not because she wished to
be reconciled with her lover, but because she was afraid she had been
unjust, been cruelly impatient and peremptory with him; she seemed to
Miss Cotton so absolutely alo