y if she noticed that in her daughter;" and the ladies laughed
again.

"Then," Mrs. Brinkley resumed concerning Alice, "she has a very pretty
face--an extremely pretty face; she has a tender voice, and she's very,
very graceful--in rather an odd way; perhaps it's only a fascinating
awkwardness. Then she dresses--or her mother dresses her--exquisitely."
The ladies, with another sensation, admitted the perfect accuracy with
which these points had been touched.

"That's what men like, what they fall in love with, what Mr. Mavering's
in love with this instant. It's no use women's flattering themselves
that they don't, for they do. The rest of the virtues and graces and
charms are for women. If that serious girl could only know the silly
things that that amiable simpleton is taken with in her, she'd--"

"Never speak to him again?" suggested Miss Cotton.

"No, I don't say that. But she would think twice before marrying him."

"And then do it," said Mrs. Stamwell pensively, with eyes that seemed
looking far into the past.

"Yes, and quite right to do it," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I don't know that
we should be very proud ourselves if we confessed just what caught our
fancy in our husbands. For my part I shouldn't like to say how much a
light hat that Mr. Brinkley happened to be wearing had to do with the
matter."

The ladies broke into another laugh, and then checked themselves,
so that Mrs. Pasmer, coming out of the corridor upon them, naturally
thought they were laughing at her. She reflected that if she had been
in their place she would have shown greater tact by not stopping just at
that instant.

But she did not mind. She knew that they talked her over, but having a
very good conscience, she simply talked them over in return. "Have you
seen my daughter within a few minutes?" she asked.

"She was with Mr. Mavering at the end of the piazza a moment ago,"
said Mrs. Brinkley. "They must leave just gone round the corner of the
building."

"Oh," said Mrs. Pasmer. She had a novel, with her finger between its
leaves, pressed against her heart, after the manner of ladies coming out
on hotel piazzas. She sat down and rested it on her knee, with her hand
over the top.

Miss Cotton bent forward, and Mrs. Pasmer lifted her fingers to let her
see the name of the book.

"Oh yes," said Miss Cotton. "But he's so terribly pessimistic, don't you
think?"

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Brinkley.

"Fumee," said Mrs. Pasmer, laying th