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He had flung them there, without knowing it, when Mrs. Pasmer left him with Alice. He expected her to join him and her mother in being amused at this, but he was as well pleased to have her touched at his having brought them, and to turn their gaiety off in praise of the roses. She got a vase for them, and set it on the table.
I couldn't let him see me cry, and I knew I should break down." "He'll have to see you cry a great many times, Alice," said her mother, with almost unexampled seriousness. "Yes, but not yet not so soon. He must think I'm very gloomy, and I want to be always bright and cheerful with him. He knows why I wouldn't let him come in; he knew I was going to have a cry." Mrs. Pasmer continued to laugh.
"No; I can't remember that she ever did." Mrs. Brinkley did not feel bound to say that she and Miss Van Hook had discussed her at large, and agreed perfectly about her. "I should like to see her; I should like to write to her." Mrs. Brinkley felt that she ought not to suffer this intimate tendency in the talk: "You must find a great many other acquaintances in the hotel, Miss Pasmer."
Or perhaps it didn't use to be so charming? I don't believe they have anything like it in Europe. Is it always so brilliant?" "I don't know," said Mavering. "I really believe it was rather a nice one." "Oh, we were both enraptured," cried Mrs. Pasmer. Alice added a quiet "Yes, indeed," and her mother went on "And we thought the Beck Hall spread was the crowning glory of the whole affair.
"Well," said the elder Mavering, rising and pulling down the rolling top of his desk, "I'm glad to hear it, for your sake, Dan. Have you been up at the house yet?" "No; I'm just off the train." "How is her mother how is Mrs. Pasmer? All well?" "Yes, sir," said Dan; "they're all very well. You don't know Mr. Pasmer, I believe, sir, do you?" "Not since college. What sort of person is he?"
It was from him that their daughter got her height, and, as Mrs. Pasmer freely owned, her distinction. Soon after their marriage the Pasmers had gone to live in Paris, where they remained faithful to the fortunes of the Second Empire till its fall, with intervals of return to their own country of a year or two years at a time.
He wondered at the glare his wife gave him. With those panned oysters before him he had forgotten all about Dan's love affair with Miss Pasmer. Mrs. Brinkley hastened to make the mention of Miss Anderson as impersonal as possible. "It was so nice to meet her again. She is such an honest, wholesome creature, and so bright and full of sense. She always made me think of the broad daylight.
Pasmer enjoyed for its own sake, and it fully satisfied the curiosity which she naturally felt to know all. She did not comment upon many of the particulars; she opened her eyes a little at the notion of her daughter sitting for two or three hours and talking with a young man in the galleries of the Museum, and she asked if anybody they knew had come in.
"Oh, the abstract girl," said Dan, and they laughed together. "You think Alice is very straightforward, don't you?" "Very," said Mrs. Pasmer, looking down with a smile "for a girl." "Yes, that's what I mean. And don't you think the most circuitous kind of fellow would be pretty direct compared with the straight-forwardest kind of girl?"
Mavering had once done a thing justice, she did not bring it up again unless somebody disputed it. But nobody had defended Mrs. Pasmer after Dan's feeble protest in her behalf; Mrs. Mavering's theory was accepted with obedience if not conviction; the whole affair dropped, except between Dan and his father. Dan was certainly not so gay as he used to be; he was glad to find that he was not so gay.
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