er mother did not look round. She could have had no premonition of the
vital news that her daughter was bringing, and she went on comparing the
first autumn month's provision bill with that of the last spring month,
and trying to account for the difference.

The silence, broken by the rattling of the two bills in her mother's
hands as she glanced from one to the other through her glasses, seemed
suddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl's rapture
burst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effect
outside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared across
the room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into a
storm of tears.

"Alice!" cried her mother, with that sanative anger which comes to
rescue women from the terror of any sudden shock. "What is the matter
with you?--what do you mean?" She dropped both of the provision bills to
the floor, and started toward her daughter.

"Nothing--nothing! Let me go. I want to go to my room." She tried to
reach the door beyond her mother.

"Indeed you shall not!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I will not have you behaving
so! What has happened to you? Tell me. You have frightened me half out
of my senses."

The girl gave up her efforts to escape, and flung herself on the sofa,
with her face in the pillow, where she continued to sob. Her mother
began to relent at the sight of her passion. As a woman and as a mother
she knew her daughter, and she knew that this passion, whatever it was,
must have vent before there could be anything intelligible between them.
She did not press her with further question, but set about making her a
little more comfortable on the sofa; she pulled the pillow straight, and
dropped a light shawl over the girl's shoulders, so that she should not
take cold.

Then Mrs. Pasmer had made up her mind that Alice had met Mavering
somewhere, and that this outburst was the retarded effect of seeing him.
During the last six weeks she had assisted at many phases of feeling in
regard to him, and knew more clearly than Alice herself the meaning of
them all. She had been patient and kind, with the resources that every
woman finds in herself when it is the question of a daughter's ordeal in
an affair of the heart which she has favoured.

The storm passed as quickly as it came, and Alice sat upright casting
off the wraps. But once checked with the fact on her tongue, she found
it hard to utter it.

"What is it,