accept it herself. But other things were not equal, and the whole
situation was very odd. All that she knew of Mr. Mavering the elder was
that he was the old friend of John Munt, and she knew far too little of
John Munt, except that he seemed to go everywhere, and to be welcome, not
to feel that his introduction was hardly a warrant for what looked like
an impending intimacy. She did not dislike Mr. Mavering; he was evidently
a country person of great self-respect, and no doubt of entire
respectability. He seemed very intelligent, too. He was a Harvard man; he
had rather a cultivated manner, or else naturally a clever way of saying
things. But all that was really nothing, if she knew no more about him,
and she certainly did not. If she could only have asked her daughter who
it was that presented young Mavering to her, that might have formed some
clew, but there was no earthly chance of asking this, and, besides, it
was probably one of those haphazard introductions that people give on
such occasions. Young Mavering's behaviour gave her still greater
question: his self-possession, his entire absence of anxiety; or any
expectation of rebuff or snub, might be the ease of unimpeachable social
acceptance, or it might be merely adventurous effrontery; only something
ingenuous and good in the young fellow's handsome face forbade this
conclusion. That his face was so handsome was another of the
complications. She recalled, in the dreamlike swiftness with which all
these things passed through her mind, what her friends had said to Alice
about her being sure to meet her fate on Class Day, and she looked at her
again to see if she had met it.

"Well, mamma?" said the girl, smiling at her mother's look.

Mrs. Pasmer thought she must have been keeping young Mavering waiting a
long time for his answer. "Why, of course, Alice. But I really don't know
what to do about the Saintsburys." This was not in the least true, but it