“Don’t—­overdo—­the honours.”

“What do you mean, mamma?” asked the girl; dropping her arms before her, and letting the shawl trail on the floor.

“Don’t you think he was very kind to us on Class Day?”

Her mother laughed.  “But every one mayn’t know it’s gratitude.”

Alice went out, but she came back in a little while, and went up to her room without speaking to any one.

The fits of elation and depression with which this first day passed for her succeeded one another during Mavering’s stay.  He did not need Alice’s chaperonage long.  By the next morning he seemed to know and to like everybody in the hotel, where he enjoyed a general favour which at that moment had no exceptions.  In the afternoon he began to organise excursions and amusements with the help of Miss Anderson.

The plans all referred to Alice, who accepted and approved with an authority which every one tacitly admitted, just as every one recognised that Mavering had come to Campobello because she was there.  Such a phase is perhaps the prettiest in the history of a love affair.  All is yet in solution; nothing has been precipitated in word or fact.  The parties to it even reserve a final construction of what they themselves say or do; they will not own to their hearts that they mean exactly this or that.  It is this phase which in its perfect freedom is the most American of all; under other conditions it is an instant, perceptible or imperceptible; under ours it is a distinct stage, unhurried by any outside influences.

The nearest approach to a definition of the situation was in a walk between Mavering and Mrs. Pasmer, and this talk, too, light and brief, might have had no such intention as her fancy assigned his part of it.

She recurred to something that had been said on Class Day about his taking up the law immediately, or going abroad first for a year.

“Oh, I’ve abandoned Europe altogether for the present,” he said laughing.  “And I don’t know but I may go back on the law too.”

“Indeed!  Then you are going to be an artist?”

“Oh no; not so bad as that.  It isn’t settled yet, and I’m off here to think it over a while before the law school opens in September.  My father wants me to go into his business and turn my powers to account in designing wall-papers.”

“Oh, how very interesting!” At the same time Mrs. Pasmer ran over the whole field of her acquaintance without finding another wall-paper maker in it.  But she remembered what Mrs. Saintsbury had said:  it was manufacturing.  This reminded her to ask if he had seen the Saintsburys lately, and he said, No; he believed they were still in Cambridge, though.

“And we shall actually see a young man,” she said finally, “in the act of deciding his own destiny!”

He laughed for pleasure in her persiflage.  “Yes; only don’t give me away.  Nobody else knows it.”

“Oh no, indeed.  Too much flattered, Mr. Mavering.  Shall you let me know when you’ve decided?  I shall be dying to know, and I shall be too high-minded to ask.”