By the time Mrs. Mavering had hissed out the last word she had her arm round her boy’s neck and was clutching him, safe and sound after his peril, to her breast; and between her kissing and crying she repeated her accusals and denunciations with violent volubility.

Dan could not have replied to them in that effusion of gratitude and tenderness he felt for his mother’s partisanship; and when she went on in almost the very terms of his self-defence, and told him that he had done as he had because it was easy for him to yield, and he could not imagine a Cat who would put her daughter up to entrapping him into a promise that she knew must break his mother’s heart, he found her so right on the main point that he could not help some question of Mrs. Pasmer in his soul.  Could she really have been at the bottom of it all?  She was very sly, and she might be very false, and it was certainly she who had first proposed their going abroad together.  It looked as if it might be as his mother said, and at any rate it was no time to dispute her, and he did not say a word in behalf of Mrs. Pasmer, whom she continued to rend in a thousand pieces and scatter to the winds till she had to stop breathless.

“Yes! it’s quite as I expected!  She did everything she could to trap you into it.  She fairly flung that poor girl at you.  She laid her plans so that you couldn’t say no—­she understood your character from the start!—­and then, when it came out by accident, and she saw that she had older heads to deal with, and you were not going to be quite at her mercy, she dropped the mask in an instant, and made Alice break with you.  Oh, I could see through her from the beginning!  And the next time, Dan, I advise you, as you never suspect anybody yourself, to consult with somebody who doesn’t take people for what they seem, and not to let yourself be flattered out of your sensor, even if you see your father is.”

Mrs. Mavering dropped back on her pillow, and her husband smiled patiently at their daughter.

Dan saw his patient smile and understood it; and the injustice which his father bore made him finally unwilling to let another remain under it.  Hard as it was to oppose his mother in anything when she was praising him so sweetly and comforting him in the moment of his need, he pulled himself together to protest:  “No, no, mother!  I don’t think Mrs. Pasmer was to blame; I don’t believe she had anything to do with it.  She’s always stood my friend—­”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt she’s made you think so, Dan,” said his mother, with unabated fondness for him; “and you think so because you’re so simple and good, and never suspect evil of any one.  It’s this hideous optimism that’s killing everything—­”

A certain note in the invalid’s falling voice seemed to warn her hearers of an impending change that could do no one good.  Eunice rose hastily and interrupted:  “Mother, Mr. Boardman’s here.  He came up with Dan.  May Minnie come in with him?”