e hall, and went up to kiss him. He smelt
abominably of tobacco smoke.

"Hullo!" said her husband. "What are you after?"

"Nothing," said his wife, enjoying his joke. "Come in here; I want to
tell you how I have just sat upon Miss Cotton."

XLVIII.

The relations between Dan and his father had always been kindly and
trustful; they now became, in a degree that touched and flattered the
young fellow, confidential. With the rest of the family there soon
ceased to be any reference to his engagement; his sisters were glad,
each in her way, to have him back again; and, whatever they may have
said between themselves, they said nothing to him about Alice. His
mother appeared to have finished with the matter the first night; she
had her theory, and she did it justice; and when Mrs. Mavering had once
done a thing justice, she did not bring it up again unless somebody
disputed it. But nobody had defended Mrs. Pasmer after Dan's feeble
protest in her behalf; Mrs. Mavering's theory was accepted with
obedience if not conviction; the whole affair dropped, except between
Dan and his father.

Dan was certainly not so gay as he used to be; he was glad to find that
he was not so gay. There had been a sort of mercy in the suddenness of
the shock; it benumbed him, and the real stress and pain came during the
long weeks that followed, when nothing occurred to vary the situation
in any manner; he did not hear a word about Alice from Boston, nor any
rumour of her people.

At first he had intended to go back with Boardman and face it out; but
there seemed no use in this, and when it came to the point he found it
impossible. Boardman went back alone, and he put Dan's things together
in his rooms at Boston and sent them to him, so that Dan remained at
home.

He set about helping his father at the business with unaffected
docility. He tried not to pose, and he did his best to bear his loss
and humiliation with manly fortitude. But his whole life had not set so
strongly in one direction that it could be sharply turned aside now,
and not in moments of forgetfulness press against the barriers almost
to bursting. Now and then, when he came to himself from the wonted
tendency, and remembered that Alice and he, who had been all in all to
each other, were now nothing, the pain was so sharp, so astonishing,
that he could not keep down a groan, which he then tried to turn off
with a cough, or a snatch of song, or a whistle, looking wildly ro