“That is what you are to decide.”

Pasmer silently refused to assume the responsibility.

“Well?” demanded his wife, after waiting for him to speak.

“Well what?”

“What do you decide?”

“What is the use of deciding a thing when it is all over?”

“It isn’t over at all.  It can be broken off at any moment.”

“Well, break it off, then, if you like.”

Mrs. Pasmer resumed the responsibility with a sigh.  She felt the burden, the penalty, of power, after having so long enjoyed its sweets, and she would willingly have abdicated the sovereignty which she had spent her whole married life in establishing.  But there was no one to take it up.  “No, I shall not break it off,” she said resentfully; “I shall let it go on.”  Then seeing that her husband was not shaken by her threat from his long-confirmed subjection, she added:  “It isn’t an ideal affair, but I think it will be a very good thing for Alice.  He is not what I expected, but he is thoroughly nice, and I should think his family was nice.  I’ve been talking with Mr. Munt about them to-day, and he confirms all that Etta Saintsbury said.  I don’t think there can be any doubt of his intentions in coming here.  He isn’t a particularly artless young man, but he’s been sufficiently frank about Alice since he’s been here.”  Her husband smoked on.  “His father seems to have taken up the business from the artistic side, and Mr. Mavering won’t be expected to enter into the commercial part at once.  If it wasn’t for Alice, I don’t believe he would think of the business for a moment; he would study law.  Of course it’s a little embarrassing to have her engaged at once before she’s seen anything of society here, but perhaps it’s all for the best, after all:  the main thing is that she should be satisfied, and I can see that she’s only too much so.  Yes, she’s very much taken with him; and I don’t wonder.  He is charming.”

It was not the first time that Mrs. Pasmer had reasoned in this round; but the utterance of her thoughts seemed to throw a new light on them, and she took a courage from them that they did not always impart.  She arrived at the final opinion expressed, with a throb of tenderness for the young fellow whom she believed eager to take her daughter from her, and now for the first time she experienced a desolation in the prospect, as if it were an accomplished fact.  She was morally a bundle of finesses, but at the bottom of her heart her daughter was all the world to her.  She had made the girl her idol, and if, like some other heathen, she had not always used her idol with the greatest deference, if she had often expected the impossible from it, and made it pay for her disappointment, still she had never swerved from her worship of it.  She suddenly asked herself, What if this young fellow, so charming and so good, should so wholly monopolise her child that she should no longer have any share in her?  What if Alice, who had so long formed