here they found themselves. Mrs. Pasmer did not look well
herself; she spoke with her eyes fixed anxiously on the door Alice had
just passed out of. "She is going to bed, but I know I shall find her
awake whenever I go."

"Perhaps," suggested Mrs. Brinkley, "this soft, heavy sea air will put
her to sleep." She tried to speak drily and indifferently, but she could
not; she was, in fact, very much interested by the situation, and she
was touched, in spite of her distaste for them both, by the evident
unhappiness of mother and daughter. She knew what it came from, and
she said to herself that they deserved it; but this did not altogether
fortify her against their pathos. "I can hardly keep awake myself," she
added gruffly.

"I hope it may help her," said Mrs. Pasmer; "the doctor strongly urged
our coming."

"Mr. Pasmer isn't with you," said Mrs. Brinkley, feeling that it was
decent to say something about him.

"No; he was detained." Mrs. Pasmer did not explain the cause of his
detention, and the two ladies slowly waved their fans a moment in
silence. "Are there many Boston People in the house?" Mrs. Pasmer asked.

"It's full of them," cried Mrs. Brinkley.

"I had scarcely noticed," sighed Mrs. Pasmer; and Mrs. Brinkley knew
that this was not true. "Alice takes up all my thoughts," she added; and
this might be true enough. She leaned a little forward and asked, in a
low, entreating voice over her fan, "Mrs. Brinkley, have you seen Mr.
Mavering lately?"

Mrs. Brinkley considered this a little too bold, a little too brazen.
Had they actually come South in pursuit of him? It was shameless, and
she let Mrs. Pasmer know something of her feeling in the shortness
with which she answered, "I saw him in Washington the other day--for a
moment." She shortened the time she had spent in Dan's company so as to
cut Mrs. Pasmer off from as much comfort as possible, and she stared at
her in open astonishment.

Mrs. Pasmer dropped her eyes and fingered the edge of her fan with a
submissiveness that seemed to Mrs. Brinkley the perfection of duplicity;
she wanted to shake her. "I knew," sighed Mrs. Pasmer, "that you had
always been such a friend of his."

It is the last straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felt
her moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if there
was really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh.
"Oh, he had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere with
Miss