April Hopes | Page 8

us make fools of ourselves? It's worth seeing, Mrs. Pasmer,
I assure you."
He rattled on very rapidly but with such a frankness in his urgency,
such amiable kindliness, that Mrs. Pasmer could not feel that it was
pushing. She looked at her daughter, but she stood as passive in the
transaction as the elder Mavering. She was taller than her mother, and
as she waited, her supple figure described that fine lateral curve which
one sees in some Louis Quinze portraits; this effect was enhanced by
the fashion of her dress of pale sage green, with a wide stripe or sash of
white dropping down the front, from her delicate waist. The same

simple combination of colours was carried up into her hat, which
surmounted darker hair than Mrs. Pasmer's, and a complexion of
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 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 instantly seemed so to Mrs. Pasmer, as a plausible excuse
will when we make it.
"Why, I'll tell you what, Mrs. Pasmer," said young Mavering, with a
cordial unsuspicion that both won and reassured her, "we'll be sure to
find them at some of the spreads. Let me be of that much use, anyway;
you must."
"We really oughtn't to let you," said Mrs. Pasmer, making a last effort
to cling to her reluctance, but feeling it fail,