"Yes," said Mrs. Pasmer, vaguely looking at Alice. She had just appeared
over the brow of the precipice, along whose face the arrivals and
departures by the ferry-boat at Campobello obliquely ascend and descend.

She came walking swiftly toward the hotel, and, for her, so excitedly
that Mrs. Pasmer involuntarily rose and went to meet her at the top of
the broad hotel steps.

"What is it, Alice?"

"Oh, nothing! I thought I saw Mr. Munt coming off the boat."

"Mr. Munt?"

"Yes." She would not stay for further question.

Her mother looked after her with the edge of her fan over her mouth till
she disappeared in the depths of the hotel corridor; then she sat down
near the steps, and chatted with some half-grown boys lounging on the
balustrade, and waited for Munt to come up over the brink of the
precipice. Dan Mavering came with him, running forward with a polite
eagerness at sight of Mrs. Pasmer. She distributed a skillful
astonishment equally between the two men she had equally expected to see,
and was extremely cordial with them, not only because she was pleased
with them, but because she was still more pleased with her daughter's
being, after all, like other girls, when it came to essentials.