red 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."

It was not then too late to adapt 'Pinafore' to any exigency of life,
and Mavering said, "You will learn from the expression of my eyes."

XIII.

The witnesses of Mavering's successful efforts to make everybody like
him were interested in his differentiation of the attenti