“Alice, you know that I would do anything for you!” cried Dan, rueing his precipitate words.

“Yes; that’s what you’ve repeatedly told me.  I used to believe it.”

“And I always believed what you said.  You said at the picnic that day that you thought I would like to live at Ponkwasset Falls if my business was there—­”

“That is not the point!”

“And now you quarrel with me because my mother wishes me to do so.”

Alice merely said:  “I don’t know why I stand here allowing you to intimidate me in my father’s house.  I demand that you shall stand aside and let me pass.”

“I’ll not oblige you to leave the room,” said Dan.  “I will go.  But if I go, you will understand that I don’t come back.”

“I hope that,” said the girl.

“Very well.  Good morning, Miss Pasmer.”

She inclined her head slightly in acknowledgment of his bow, and he whirled out of the room and down the dim narrow passageway into the arms of Mrs. Pasmer, who had resisted as long as she could her curiosity to know what the angry voices of himself and Alice meant.

“O Mr. Mavering, is it you?” she buzzed; and she flung aside one pretence for another in adding, “Couldn’t Alice make you stay to breakfast?”

Dan felt a rush of tenderness in his heart at the sound of the kind, humbugging little voice.  “No, thank you, Mrs. Pasmer, I couldn’t stay, thank you.  I—­I thank you very much.  I—­good-bye, Mrs. Pasmer.”  He wrung her hand, and found his way out of the apartment door, leaving her to clear up the mystery of his flight and his broken words as she could.

“Alice,” she said, as she entered the room, where the girl had remained, “what have you been doing now?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, with a remnant of her scorn for Dan qualifying her tone and manner to her mother.  “I’ve dismissed Mr. Mavering.”

“Then you want him to come to lunch?” asked her mother.  “I should advise him to refuse.”

“I don’t think he’d accept,” said Alice.  Then, as Mrs. Pasmer stood in the door, preventing her egress, as Dan had done before, she asked meekly “Will you let me pass, mamma?  My head aches.”

Mrs. Pasmer, whose easy triumphs in so many difficult circumstances kept her nearly always in good temper, let herself go, at these words, in vexation very uncommon with her.  “Indeed I shall not!” she retorted.  “And you will please sit down here and tell me what you mean by dismissing Mr. Mavering.  I’m tired of your whims and caprices.”

“I can’t talk,” began the girl stubbornly.

“Yes, I think you can,” said her mother.  “At any rate, I can.  Now what is it all?”

“Perhaps this letter, will explain,” said Alice, continuing to dignify her enforced submission with a tone of unabated hauteur; and she gave her mother Mrs. Mavering’s letter, which Dan had mechanically restored to her.

Mrs. Pasmer read it, not only without indignation, but apparently without displeasure.  But, she understood perfectly what the trouble was, when she looked up and asked, cheerfully, “Well?”