wholesome pallor; her eyes were grey and grave, with black brows, and her face, which was rather narrow, had a pleasing irregularity in the sharp jut of the nose; in profile the parting of the red lips showed well back into the cheek.
“I don't know,” said Mrs. Pasmer, in her own behalf; and she added in his, “about letting you take so much trouble,” so smoothly that it would have been quite impossible to detect the point of union in the two utterances.
“Well, don't call it names, anyway, Mrs. Pasmer,” pleaded the young man. “I thought it was nothing but a pleasure and a privilege—”
“The fact is,” she explained, neither consenting nor refusing, “that we were expecting to meet some friends who had tickets for us”—young Mavering's face fell—“and I can't imagine what's happened.”
“Oh, let's hope something dreadful,” he cried.
“Perhaps you know them,” she delayed further. “Professor Saintsbury!”
“Well, rather! Why, they were here about an hour ago—both of them. They must have been looking for you.”
“Yes; we were to meet them here. We waited to come out with other friends, and I was afraid we were late.” Mrs. Pasmer's face expressed a tempered disappointment, and she looked at her daughter for indications of her wishes in the circumstances; seeing in her eye a willingness to accept young Mavering's invitation, she hesitated more decidedly than she had yet done, for she was, other things being equal, quite willing to 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
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