The young people rose from their chairs.  “I can’t repeat my own mots,” said Arthur:  “Miss Belding will tell you.”

“Indeed I shall not,” replied Alice.  “It was not one of his best, mamma.”

She gave him her hand as he said “Good-night,” and it lay in his firm grasp a moment without reserve or tremor.

“You are a queer girl, Alice,” said Mrs. Belding, as they walked into the drawing-room through the open window.  “You put on your stiffest company manners for Mr. Furrey, and you seem entirely at ease with Mr. Farnham, who is much older and cleverer, and is noted for his sarcastic criticisms.”

“I do not know why it is, mamma, but I do feel very much at home with Mr. Farnham, and I do not want Mr. Furrey to feel at home with me.”

Upon this, Mrs. Belding laughed aloud.  Alice turned in surprise, and her mother said, “It is too good to keep.  I must tell you.  It is such a joke on Arthur;” and, sitting in a low arm-chair, while Alice stood before her leaning upon the back of another, she told the whole story of the scene of the morning in the rose-house.  She gave it in the fullest detail, interrupting herself here and there for soft cachinnations, unmindful of the stern, unsmiling silence with which her daughter listened.

She finished, with a loud nourish of merriment, and then asked:  “Did you ever hear anything so funny in your life?”

The young lady was turning white and red in an ominous manner, and was biting her nether lip.  Her answer to her mother’s question was swift and brief: 

“I never heard anything so horrid,” and she moved majestically away without another word.

Mrs. Belding sat for a moment abashed.  “There!” she said to herself, “I knew very well I ought not to tell her.  But it was too good to keep, and I had nobody else to tell.”  She went to bed, feeling rather ill-used.  As she passed her daughter’s door, she said, “Good-night, Alice!” and a voice riot quite so sweet as usual replied, “Good-night, mamma,” but the door was not opened.

Alice turned down her light and sat upon a cushioned seat in the embrasure of her open window.  She looked up at the stars, which swam and glittered in her angry eyes.  With trembling lips and clinched hands she communed with herself.  “Why, why, why did mamma tell me that horrid story?  To think there should be such women in the world!  To take such a liberty with him, of all men!  She could not have done it without some encouragement—­and he could not have encouraged her.  He is not that kind of a vulgar flirt at all.  But what do I know about men?  They may all be—­but I did not think—­what business have I thinking about it?  I had better go to bed.  I have spent all the evening talking to a man who—­Oh!  I wish mamma had not told me that wretched story.  I shall never speak to him again.  It is a pity, too, for we are such near neighbors, and he is so nice, if he were not—­But I don’t care how nice he is, she has spoiled him.  I wonder who she was.  Pretty, was she?  I don’t believe a word of it—­some bold-faced, brazen creature.  Oh!  I shall hate myself if I cry;” but that was past praying for, and she closed her lattice and went to bed for fear the stars should witness her unwelcome tears.