The silence, broken by the rattling of the two bills in her mother's hands as she glanced from one to the other through her glasses, seemed suddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl's rapture burst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effect outside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared across the room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into a storm of tears. “Alice!” cried her mother, with that sanative anger which comes to rescue women from the terror of any sudden shock. “What is the matter with you?--what do you mean?” She dropped both of the provision bills to the floor, and started toward her daughter. “Nothing--nothing! Let me go. I want to go to my room.” She tried to reach the door beyond her mother. “Indeed you shall not!” cried Mrs. Pasmer. “I will not have you behaving so! What has happened to you? Tell me. You have frightened me half out of my senses.” The girl gave up her efforts to escape, and flung herself on the sofa, with her face in the pillow, where she continued to sob. Her mother began to relent at the sight of her passion. As a woman and as a mother she knew her daughter, and she knew that this passion, whatever it was, must have vent before there could be anything intelligible between them. She did not press her with further question, but set about making her a little more comfortable on the sofa; she pulled the pillow straight, and dropped a light shawl over the girl's shoulders, so that she should not take cold. Then Mrs. Pasmer had made up her mind that Alice had met Mavering somewhere, and that this outburst was the retarded effect of seeing him. During the last six weeks she had assisted at many phases of feeling in regard to him, and knew more clearly than Alice herself the meaning of them all. She had been patient and kind, with the resources that every woman finds in herself when it is the question of a daughter's ordeal in an affair of the heart which she has favoured. The storm passed as quickly as it came, and Alice sat upright casting off the wraps. But once checked with the fact on her tongue, she found it hard to utter it. “What is it, Alice?--what is it?” urged her mother. “Nothing. I--Mr. Mavering--we met--I met him at the Museum, and--we're engaged! It's really so. It seems like raving, but it's true. He came with me to the door; I wouldn't let him come in. Don't you believe it? Oh, we are! indeed we are! Are you glad, mamma? You know I couldn't have lived without him.” She trembled on the verge of another outbreak. Mrs. Pasmer sacrificed her astonishment in the interest of sanity, and returned quietly: “Glad, Alice! You know that I think he's the sweetest and best fellow in the world.” “O mamma!” “But are you sure--”