ring, at first; and Dan
was able to go and confess all but this to Alice. She received his
submission magnanimously, and said that she was glad it had happened,
because his saying this showed that now they understood each other
perfectly. Then she fixed her eyes on his, and said, "I've just been
round to see Lilly, and she's as well as ever; it was only a nervous
shock."

Whether Mavering was really indifferent to Miss Langham's condition,
or whether the education of his perceptions had gone so far that he
consciously ignored her, he answered, "That was splendid of you, Alice."

"No," she said; "it's you that are splendid; and you always are. Oh, I
wonder if I can ever be worthy of you!"

Their mutual forgiveness was very sweet to them, and they went on
praising each other. Alice suddenly broke away from this weakening
exchange of worship, and said, with that air of coming to business which
he lad learned to recognise and dread a little, "Dan, don't you think I
ought to write to your mother?"

"Write to my mother?"

"Why, you have written to her. You wrote as soon as you got back, and
she answered you."

"Yes; but write regularly?--Show that I think of her all the time?
When I really think I'm going to take you from her, I seem so cruel and
heartless!"

"Oh, I don't look at it in that light, Alice."

"Don't joke! And when I think that we're going away to leave her, for
several years, perhaps, as soon as we're married, I can't make it seem
right. I know how she depends upon your being near her, and seeing
her every now and then; and to go off to Europe for years, perhaps--Of
course you can be of use to your father there; but do you think it's
right toward your mother? I want you to think."

Dan thought, but his thinking was mainly to the effect that he did not
know what she was driving at. Had she got any inkling of that plan of
his mother's for them to come and stay a year or two at the Falls after
their marriage? He always expected to be able to reconcile that plan
with the Pasmer plan of going at once; to his optimism the two were not
really incompatible; but he did not wish them prematurely confronted in
Alice's mind. Was this her way of letting him know that she knew what
his mother wished, and that she was willing to make the sacrifice? Or
was it just some vague longing to please him by a show of affection
toward his family, an unmeditated impulse of reparation? He had an
impulse himself to be frank wit