She came walking swiftly toward the hotel, and, for her, so excitedly that Mrs. Pasmer involuntarily rose and went to meet her at the top of the broad hotel steps.

“What is it, Alice?”

“Oh, nothing!  I thought I saw Mr. Munt coming off the boat.”

“Mr. Munt?”

“Yes.”  She would not stay for further question.

Her mother looked after her with the edge of her fan over her mouth till she disappeared in the depths of the hotel corridor; then she sat down near the steps, and chatted with some half-grown boys lounging on the balustrade, and waited for Munt to come up over the brink of the precipice.  Dan Mavering came with him, running forward with a polite eagerness at sight of Mrs. Pasmer.  She distributed a skillful astonishment equally between the two men she had equally expected to see, and was extremely cordial with them, not only because she was pleased with them, but because she was still more pleased with her daughter’s being, after all, like other girls, when it came to essentials.

XII.

Alice came down to lunch in a dress which reconciled the seaside and the drawing-room in an effect entirely satisfactory to her mother, and gave her hand to both the gentlemen without the affectation of surprise at seeing either.

“I saw Mr. Munt coning up from the boat,” she said in answer to Mavering’s demand for some sort of astonishment from her.  “I wasn’t certain that it was you.”

Mrs. Pasmer, whose pretences had been all given away by this simple confession, did not resent it, she was so much pleased with her daughter’s evident excitement at the young man’s having come.  Without being conscious of it, perhaps, Alice prettily assumed the part of hostess from the moment of their meeting, and did the honours of the hotel with a tacit implication of knowing that he had come to see her there.  They had only met twice, but now, the third time, meeting after a little separation, their manner toward each other was as if their acquaintance had been making progress in the interval.  She took him about quite as if he had joined their family party, and introduced him to Miss Anderson and to all her particular friends, for each of whom, within five minutes after his presentation, he contrived to do some winning service.  She introduced him to her father, whom he treated with deep respect and said “Sir” to.  She showed him the bowling alley, and began to play tennis with him.

Her mother, sitting with John Munt on the piazza, followed these polite attentions to Mavering with humorous satisfaction, which was qualified as they went on.

“Alice,” she said to her, at a chance which offered itself during the evening, and then she hesitated for the right word.

“Well; mamma?” said the girl impatiently, stopping on her way to walk up and down the piazza with Mavering; she had run in to get a wrap and a Tam-o’-Shanter cap.