and prospects, and heard with
satisfaction the good accounts which Mrs. Pasmer was able to give of
his father's prosperity. There had always been more or less apprehension
among them of a time when a family subscription would be necessary for
Bob Pasmer, and in the relief which the new situation gave them some
of them tried to remember having known Dan's father in College, but it
finally came to their guessing that they must have heard John Munt speak
of him.

Mrs. Pasmer had a supreme control in the affair. She believed with the
rest--so deeply is this delusion seated--that she had made the match;
but knowing herself to have used no dishonest magic in the process, she
was able to enjoy it with a clean conscience. She grew fonder of Dan;
they understood each other; she was his refuge from Alice's ideals, and
helped him laugh off his perplexity with them. They were none the less
sincere because they were not in the least frank with each other. She
let Dan beat about the bush to his heart's content, and waited for him
at the point which she knew he was coming to, with an unconsciousness
which he knew was factitious; neither of them got tired of this, or
failed freshly to admire the other's strategy.

XL.

It cannot be pretended that Alice was quite pleased with the way her
friends took her engagement, or rather the way in which they spoke of
Dan. It seemed to her that she alone, or she chiefly, ought to feel that
sweetness and loveliness of which every one told her, as if she could
not have known it. If he was sweet and lovely to every one, how was he
different to her except in degree? Ought he not to be different in kind?
She put the case to Miss Cotton, whom it puzzled, while she assured
Alice that he was different in kind to her, though he might not seem
so; the very fact that he was different in degree proved that he was
different in kind. This logic sufficed for the moment of its expression,
but it did not prevent Alice from putting the case to Dan himself. At
one of those little times when she sat beside him alone and rearranged
his necktie, or played with his watch chain, or passed a critical hand
over his cowlick, she asked him if he did not think they ought to have
an ideal in their engagement. "What ideal?" he asked. He thought it was
all solid ideal through and through. "Oh," she said, "be more and more
to each other." He said he did not see how that could be; if there was
anything more of him, she wa