her!" he said joyously, with a glance at the
handwriting.

"Will you please explain it?" said Alice, and Dan began to read it.

It began with a good many excuses for not having written before, and
went on with a pretty expression of interest in Alice's letters and
gratitude for them; Mrs. Mavering assured the girl that she could not
imagine what a pleasure they had been to her. She promised herself
that they should be great friends, and she said that she looked forward
eagerly to the time, now drawing near, when Dan should bring her home to
them. She said she knew Alice would find it dull at the Falls except for
him, but they would all do their best, and she would find the place
very different from what she had seen it in the winter. Alice could make
believe that she was there just for the summer, and Mrs. Mavering hoped
that before the summer was gone she would be so sorry for a sick old
woman that she would not even wish to go with it. This part of the
letter, which gave Dan away so hopelessly, as he felt, was phrased so
touchingly, that he looked up from it with moist eyes to the hard cold
judgment in the eyes of Alice.

"Will you please explain it?" she repeated.

He tried to temporise. "Explain what?"

Alice was prompt to say, "Had you promised your mother to take me home
to live?"

Dan did not answer.

"You promised my mother to go abroad. What else have you promised?" He
continued silent, and she added, "You are a faithless man." They were
the words of Romola, in the romance, to Tito; she had often admired
them; and they seemed to her equally the measure of Dan's offence.

"Alice--"

"Here are your letters and remembrances, Mr. Mavering." Dan mechanically
received the packet she had been holding behind her; with a perverse
freak of intelligence he observed that, though much larger now, it was
tied up with the same ribbon which had fastened it when Alice returned
his letters and gifts before. "Good-bye. I wish you every happiness
consistent with your nature."

She bowed coldly, and was about to leave him, as she had planned; but
she had not arranged that he should be standing in front of the door,
and he was there, with no apparent intention of moving.

"Will you allow me to pass?" she was forced to ask, however, haughtily.

"No!" he retorted, with a violence that surprised him. "I will not let
you pass till you have listened to me--till you tell me why you treat me
so. I won't stand it--I've had en