“There’s no doubt but she’s informed herself.  She put me through my catechism about the Maverings the day of the picnic down there.”

“Do you know them?”

“Bridge Mavering and I were at Harvard together.”

“Tell me about them.”  Mrs. Brinkley listened to Munt’s praises of his old friend with an attention superficially divided with the people to whom she bowed and smiled.  The room was filling up.  “Well,” she said at the end, “he’s a sweet young fellow.  I hope he likes his Pasmers.”

“I guess there’s no doubt about his liking one of them—­the principal one.”

“Yes, if she is the principal one.”  There was an implication in everything she said that Dan Mavering had been hoodwinked by Mrs. Pasmer.  Mature ladies always like to imply something of the sort in these cases.  They like to ignore the prime agency of youth and love, and pretend that marriage is a game that parents play at with us, as if we were in an old comedy; it is a tradition.  “Will he take her home to live?”

“No.  I heard that they’re all going abroad—­for a year, or two at least.”

“Ah!  I thought so,” cried Mrs. Brinkley.  She looked up with whimsical pleasure in the uncertainty of an old gentleman who is staring hard at her through his glasses.  “Well,” she said with a pleasant sharpness, “do you make me out?”

“As nearly as my belief in your wisdom will allow,” said the old gentleman, as distinctly as his long white moustache and an apparent absence of teeth behind it would let him.  John Munt had eagerly abandoned the seat he was keeping at Mrs. Brinkley’s side, and had launched himself into the thickening crowd.  The old gentleman, who was lank and tall, folded himself down into it, He continued as tranquilly as if seated quite alone with Mrs. Brinkley, and not minding that his voice, with the senile crow in it, made itself heard by others.  “I’m always surprised to find sensible people at these things of Jane’s.  They’re most extraordinary things.  Jane’s idea of society is to turn a herd of human beings loose in her house, and see what will come of it.  She has no more sense of hospitality or responsibility than the Elements or Divine Providence.  You may come here and have a good time—­if you can get it; she won’t object; or you may die of solitude and inanition; she’d never know it.  I don’t know but it’s rather sublime in her.  It’s like the indifference of fate; but it’s rather rough on those who don’t understand it.  She likes to see her rooms filled with pretty dresses, but she has no social instincts and no social inspiration whatever.  She lights and heats and feeds her guests, and then she leaves them to themselves.  She’s a kind woman—­Jane is a very good-natured woman, and I really think she’d be grieved if she thought any one went away unhappy, but she does nothing to make them at home in her house—­absolutely nothing.”

“Perhaps she does all they deserve for them.  I don’t know that any one acquires merit by coming to an evening party; and it’s impossible to be personally hospitable to everybody in such a crowd.”