“Yes, if such a sayer of good things will deign to borrow--” “Oh, Mrs. Pasmer!” cried Munt, otherwise speechless. “And the mother? Do you know Mrs. Mavering?” “Mrs. Mavering I've never seen.” “Oh!” said Mrs. Pasmer, with a disappointment for which Munt tried to console her. “I've never even been at their place. He asked me once a great while ago; but you know how those things are. I've heard that she used to be very pretty and very gay. They went about a great deal, to Saratoga and Cape May and such places--rather out of our beat.” “And now?” “And now she's been an invalid for a great many years. Bedridden, I believe. Paralysis, I think.” “Yes; Mrs. Saintsbury said something of the kind.” “Well,” said Munt, anxious to add to the store of knowledge which this remark let him understand he had not materially increased, “I think Mrs. Mavering was the origin of the wall-paper--or her money. Mavering was poor; her father had started it, and Mavering turned in his talent.” “How very interesting! And is that the reason--its being ancestral--that Mr. Mavering wishes his son to go into it?” “Is he going into it?” asked Munt. “He's come up here to think about it.” “I should suppose it would be a very good thing,” said Munt. “What a very remarkable forest!” said Mrs. Pasmer, examining it on either side, and turning quite round. This gave her, from her place in the van of the straggling procession, a glimpse of Alice and Dan Mavering far in the rear. “Don't you know,” he was saying to the girl at the same moment, “it's like some of those Dore illustrations to the Inferno, or the Wandering Jew.” “Oh yes. I was trying to think what it was made me think I had seen it before,” she answered. “It must be that. But how strange it is!” she exclaimed, “that sensation of having been there before--in some place before where you can't possibly have been.” “And do you feel it here?” he asked, as vividly interested as if they two had been the first to notice the phenomenon which has been a psychical consolation to so many young observers. “Yes,” she cried. “I hope I was with you,” he said, with a sudden turn of levity, which did not displease her, for there seemed to be a tender earnestness lurking in it. “I couldn't bear to think of your being alone in such a howling wilderness.” “Oh, I was with a large picnic,” she retorted gaily. “You might have been among the rest. I didn't notice.” “Well, the next time, I wish you'd look closer. I don't like being left out.” They were so far behind the rest that he devoted himself entirely to her, and they had grown more and more confidential. They came to a narrow foot-bridge over a deep gorge. The hand-rail had fallen away. He sprang forward and gave her his hand for the passage. “Who helped you over here?” he demanded. “Don't say I didn't.”