“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.
“I should think,” said Mrs. Stamwell, “that she would believe a little in heredity if she noticed that in her daughter;” and the ladies laughed again.