not be regarded as forming a social base, except in rare instances. They
presented peculiar difficulties in calling, and for any sort of
entertainment they were too--not public, perhaps, but--evident.

In spite of these objections Mrs. Pasmer took a flat in the Cavendish,
and she took it furnished from people who were going abroad for a year.




X.

Mrs. Pasmer stood at the drawing-room window of this apartment, the
morning after her call upon Mrs. Saintsbury, looking out on the passage
of an express-wagon load of trunks through Cavendish Square, and
commenting the fact with the tacit reflection that it was quite time she
should be getting away from Boston too, when her daughter, who was
looking out of the other window, started significantly back.

"What is it, Alice?"

"Nothing! Mr. Mavering, I think, and that friend of his----"

"Which friend? But where? Don't look! They will think we were watching
them. I can't see them at all. Which way were they going?" Mrs. Pasmer
dramatised a careless unconsciousness to the square, while vividly
betraying this anxiety to her daughter.

Alice walked away to the furthest part of the room. "They are coming this
way," she said indifferently.