ter me."

"Ah! I always supposed she was very conscientious."

"She's conscientious, but she likes me too well."

"Oh!" commented Mrs. Brinkley to herself, "then you know I don't like
you, and you'll use me in one way, if you can't in another. Very
well!" But she found the girl's trust touching somehow, though the
sentimentality of her appeal seemed as tawdry as ever.

"I knew you would be just," added Alice wistfully.

"Oh, I don't know about atonements!" said Mrs. Brinkley, with an effect
of carelessness. "It seems to me that we usually make them for our own
sake."

"I have thought of that," said Alice, with a look of expectation.

"And we usually astonish other people when we offer them."

"Either they don't like it, or else they don't feel so much injured as
we had supposed."

"Oh, but there's no question--"

"If Miss Anderson--"

"Miss Anderson? Oh--oh yes!"

"If Miss Anderson for example," pursued Mrs. Brinkley, "felt aggrieved
with you. But really I've no right to enter into your affairs, Miss
Pasmer."

"Oh Yes, yes!--do! I asked you to," the girl implored.

"I doubt if it will help matters for her to know that you regret
anything; and if she shouldn't happen to have thought that you were
unjust to her, it would make her uncomfortable for nothing."

"Do you think so?" asked the girl, with a disappointment that betrayed
itself in her voice and eyes.

"I never feel I myself competent to advise," said Mrs. Brinkley. "I can
criticise--anybody can--and I do, pretty freely; but advice is a more
serious matter. Each of us must act from herself--from what she thinks
is right."

"Yes, I see. Thank you so much, Mrs. Brinkley."

"After all, we have a right to do ourselves good, even when we pretend
that it's good to others, if we don't do them any harm."

"Yes, I see." Alice looked away, and then seemed about to speak again;
but one of Mrs. Brinkley's acquaintance came up, and the girl rose with
a frightened air and went away.

"Alice's talk with you this morning did her so much good!" said Mrs.
Pasmer, later. "She has always felt so badly about Miss Anderson!"

Mrs. Brinkley saw that Mrs. Pasmer wished to confine the meaning of
their talk to Miss Anderson, and she assented, with a penetration of
which she saw that Mrs. Pasmer was gratefully aware.

She grew more tolerant of both the Pasmers as the danger of greater
intimacy from them, which seemed to threaten at first seemed to pass
away. She h