“Do you mean that he's too sympathetic--that he isn't sincere?” asked the first--a single lady of forty-nine, a Miss Cotton, who had a little knot of conscience between her pretty eyebrows, tied there by the unremitting effort of half a century to do and say exactly the truth, and to find it out. Mrs. Brinkley, whom she addressed, was of that obesity which seems often to incline people to sarcasm. “No, I don't think he's insincere. I think he always means what he says and does--Well, do you think a little more concentration of good-will would hurt him for Miss Pasmer's purpose--if she has it?” “Yes, I see,” said Miss Cotton. She waited, with her kind eyes fixed wistfully upon Alice, for the young people to approach and get by. “I wonder what the men think of him?” “You might ask Miss Anderson,” said Mrs. Brinkley. “Oh, do you think they tell her?” “Not that exactly,” said Mrs. Brinkley, shaking with good-humoured pleasure in her joke. “Her voice--oh yes. She and Alice are great friends, of course.” “I should think,” said Mrs. Stamwell, the second speaker, “that Mr. Mavering would be jealous sometimes--till he looked twice.” “Yes,” said Miss Cotton, obliged to admit the force of the remark, but feeling that Mr. Mavering had been carried out of the field of her vision by the turn of the talk. “I suppose,” she continued, “that he wouldn't be so well liked by other young men as she is by other girls, do you think?” “I don't think, as a rule,” said Mrs. Brinkley, “that men are half so appreciative of one another as women are. It's most amusing to see the open scorn with which two young fellows treat each other if a pretty girl introduces them.” All the ladies joined in the laugh with which Mrs. Brinkley herself led off. But Miss Cotton stopped laughing first. “Do you mean,”, she asked, “that if a gentleman were generally popular with gentlemen it would be--” “Because he wasn't generally so with women? Something like that--if you'll leave Mr. Mavering out of the question. Oh, how very good of them!” she broke off, and all the ladies glanced at Mavering and Alice where they had stopped at the further end of the piazza, and were looking off. “Now I can probably finish before they get back here again. What I do mean, Miss Cotton, is that neither sex willingly accepts the favourites of the other.” “Yes,” said Miss Cotton admissively. “And all that saves Miss Pasmer is that she has not only the qualities that women like in women, but some of the qualities that men, like in them. She's thoroughly human.” A little sensation, almost a murmur, not wholly of assent, went round that circle which had so nearly voted Alice a saint. “In the first place, she likes to please men.” “Oh!” came from the group. “And that makes them like her--if it doesn't go too far, as her mother says.” The ladies all laughed, recognising a common turn of phrase in Mrs. Pasmer.