ad not responded to their advances, but there was no reason
why she should not be civil to them; there had never been any open
quarrel with them. She often found herself in talk with them, and was
amused to note that she was the only Bostonian whom they did not keep
aloof from.

It could not be said that she came to like either of them better. She
still suspected Mrs. Pasmer of design, though she developed none beyond
manoeuvring Alice out of the way of people whom she wished to avoid; and
she still found the girl, as she always thought her, as egotist, whose
best impulses toward others had a final aim in herself. She thought her
very crude in her ideas--cruder than she had seemed at Campobello, where
she had perhaps been softened by her affinition with the gentler and
kindlier nature of Dan Mavering. Mrs. Brinkley was never tired of saying
that he had made the most fortunate escape in the world, and though
Brinkley owned he was tired of hearing it, she continued to say it with
a great variety of speculation. She recognised that in most girls of
Alice's age many traits are in solution, waiting their precipitation
into character by the chemical contact which time and chances must
bring, and that it was not fair to judge her by the present ferment of
hereditary tendencies; but she rejoiced all the same that it was not Dan
Mavering's character which was to give fixity to hers. The more she saw
of the girl the more she was convinced that two such people could only
make each other unhappy; from day to day, almost from hour to hour, she
resolved to write to Mavering and tell him not to come.

She was sure that the Pasmers wished to have the affair on again, and
part of her fascination with a girl whom she neither liked nor approved
was her belief that Alice's health had broken under the strain of her
regrets and her despair. She did not get better from the change of
air; she grew more listless and languid, and more dependent upon Mrs.
Brinkley's chary sympathy. The older woman asked herself again and again
what made the girl cling to her? Was she going to ask her finally to
intercede with Dan? or was it really a despairing atonement to him,
the most disagreeable sacrifice she could offer, as Mr. Brinkley had
stupidly suggested? She believed that Alice's selfishness and morbid
sentiment were equal to either.

Brinkley generally took the girl's part against his wife, and in a heavy
jocose way tried to cheer her up. He did lit