“I have thought of that,” said Alice, with a look of expectation.

“And we usually astonish other people when we offer them.”

“Either they don’t like it, or else they don’t feel so much injured as we had supposed.”

“Oh, but there’s no question—­”

“If Miss Anderson—­”

“Miss Anderson?  Oh—­oh yes!”

“If Miss Anderson for example,” pursued Mrs. Brinkley, “felt aggrieved with you.  But really I’ve no right to enter into your affairs, Miss Pasmer.”

“Oh Yes, yes!—­do!  I asked you to,” the girl implored.

“I doubt if it will help matters for her to know that you regret anything; and if she shouldn’t happen to have thought that you were unjust to her, it would make her uncomfortable for nothing.”

“Do you think so?” asked the girl, with a disappointment that betrayed itself in her voice and eyes.

“I never feel I myself competent to advise,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  “I can criticise—­anybody can—­and I do, pretty freely; but advice is a more serious matter.  Each of us must act from herself—­from what she thinks is right.”

“Yes, I see.  Thank you so much, Mrs. Brinkley.”

“After all, we have a right to do ourselves good, even when we pretend that it’s good to others, if we don’t do them any harm.”

“Yes, I see.”  Alice looked away, and then seemed about to speak again; but one of Mrs. Brinkley’s acquaintance came up, and the girl rose with a frightened air and went away.

“Alice’s talk with you this morning did her so much good!” said Mrs. Pasmer, later.  “She has always felt so badly about Miss Anderson!”

Mrs. Brinkley saw that Mrs. Pasmer wished to confine the meaning of their talk to Miss Anderson, and she assented, with a penetration of which she saw that Mrs. Pasmer was gratefully aware.

She grew more tolerant of both the Pasmers as the danger of greater intimacy from them, which seemed to threaten at first seemed to pass away.  She had 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