up, and Mr.
Mavering promised to bring me back to him, but he was not there when we
got back. Mr. Mavering got me some ice cream first, and then he found
you for me."

"Really," said Mrs. Pasmer to herself, "the combat thickens!" To her
daughter she said, "He's very handsome."

"He laughs too much," said the daughter. Her mother recognised her
uncandour with a glance. "But he waltzes well," added the girl.

"Waltzes?" echoed the mother. "Did you waltz with him, Alice?"

"Everybody else was dancing. He asked me for a turn or two, and of
course I did it. What difference?"

"Oh, none--none. Only--I didn't see you."

"Perhaps you weren't looking."

"Yes, I was looking all the time."

"What do you mean, mamma?"

"Well," said Mrs. Pasmer, in a final despair, "we don't know anything
about them."

"We're the only people here who don't, then," said her daughter. "The
ladies were bowing right left to him all the time, and he kept asking if
I knew this one and that one, and all I could say was that some of them
were distant cousins, but I wasn't acquainted with them. I would think
he'd wonder who we were."

"Yes," said the mother thoughtfully.

"There! he's laughing with that other student. But don't look!"

Mrs. Pasmer saw well enough out of the corner of her eye the joking that
went on between Mavering and his friend, and it did not displease her
to think that it probably referred to Alice. While the young man came
hurrying back to them she glanced at the girl standing near her with
a keenly critical inspection, from which she was able to exclude all
maternal partiality, and justly decided that she was one of the most
effective girls in the place. That costume of hers was perfect. Mrs.
Pasmer wished now that she could have compared it more carefully with
other costumes; she had noticed some very pretty ones; and a feeling
of vexation that Alice should have prevented this by being away so long
just when the crowd was densest qualified her satisfaction. The people
were going very fast now. The line of the oval in the nave was broken
into groups of lingering talkers, who were conspicuous to each other,
and Mrs. Pasmer felt that she and her daughter were conspicuous to all
the rest where they stood apart, with the two Maverings converging upon
them from different points, the son nodding and laughing to friends of
both sexes as he came, the father wholly absorbed in not spilling the
glass of claret punch which he car