of hearing it, she continued to say it with a great variety of speculation.  She recognised that in most girls of Alice’s age many traits are in solution, waiting their precipitation into character by the chemical contact which time and chances must bring, and that it was not fair to judge her by the present ferment of hereditary tendencies; but she rejoiced all the same that it was not Dan Mavering’s character which was to give fixity to hers.  The more she saw of the girl the more she was convinced that two such people could only make each other unhappy; from day to day, almost from hour to hour, she resolved to write to Mavering and tell him not to come.

She was sure that the Pasmers wished to have the affair on again, and part of her fascination with a girl whom she neither liked nor approved was her belief that Alice’s health had broken under the strain of her regrets and her despair.  She did not get better from the change of air; she grew more listless and languid, and more dependent upon Mrs. Brinkley’s chary sympathy.  The older woman asked herself again and again what made the girl cling to her?  Was she going to ask her finally to intercede with Dan? or was it really a despairing atonement to him, the most disagreeable sacrifice she could offer, as Mr. Brinkley had stupidly suggested?  She believed that Alice’s selfishness and morbid sentiment were equal to either.

Brinkley generally took the girl’s part against his wife, and in a heavy jocose way tried to cheer her up.  He did little things for her; fetched and carried chairs and cushions and rugs, and gave his attentions the air of pleasantries.  One of his offices was to get the ladies’ letters for them in the evening, and one night he came in beaming with a letter for each of them where they sat together in the parlour.  He distributed them into their laps.

“Hello!  I’ve made a mistake,” he said, putting down his head to take back the letter he had dropped in Miss Pasmer’s lap.  “I’ve given you my wife’s letter.”

The girl glanced at it, gave a moaning kind of cry, and fell beak in her chair, hiding her face in her hands.

Mrs. Brinkley, possessed herself of the other letter, and, though past the age when ladies wish to kill their husbands for their stupidity, she gave Brinkley a look of massacre which mystified even more than it murdered his innocence.  He had to learn later from his wife’s more elicit fury what the women had all known instantly.

He showed his usefulness in gathering Alice up and getting her to her mother’s room.”

“Oh, Mrs. Brinkley,” implored Mrs. Pasmer, following her to the door, “is Mr. Mavering coming here?”

“I don’t know—­I can’t say—­I haven’t read the letter yet.”

“Oh, do let me know when you’ve read it, won’t you?  I don’t know what we shall do.”

Mrs. Brinkley read the letter in her own room.  “You go down,” she said to her husband, with unabated ferocity; “and telegraph Dan Mavering at Wormley’s not to came.  Say we’re going away at once.”