"The man is unmistakably a gentleman. He is in deep trouble over a young woman, not his sister, who has run away, presumably with a man. He tried to trace them and failed." "Failed?" "Failed. If she is his wife, may God help her when he catches her, for there was danger in that man’s eye. But his pride forbade him to give me more than the bare facts necessary to explain his extraordinary action in surprising you into lending him my horse." "Was that the way he put it?" asked Carolina. "It was." "He is a gentleman!" She waited a moment, hesitated, and then said: "Did he say anything else, anything about--" "About the woman in the case? Not a word about anything more than I have told you. He seemed to take it for granted, however, that you were my wife." "And didn’t you deny it?" demanded Carolina, with such spirit that she surprised herself. She felt her cheeks grow hot. "He didn’t give me time." "And you let him go, still thinking it?" "I didn’t let him do anything. He mastered the situation, and carried it off with such ease that I almost felt grateful to him for borrowing the dogcart." Carolina opened her lips to say something, then changed her mind. "It is of no importance," she said lightly. But there was an odd sinking at her heart which belied her words. She had never believed in love at first sight, yet she had watched this stranger at a distance all one evening, and at their first meeting in the throng leaving the opera, she had not been mistaken in the look of--well, of welcome, she had felt. Their second meeting had been equally striking, and Carolina calmly said to herself that she would meet this man again, and the third time it would be even more strange. She was so sure of this that she would not allow her mind to be disturbed by the two blundering conclusions Sherman had forced--one that the man was in pursuit of a runaway wife or love and the other that she was the wife of the master of the horse. She was so sure of her own premises that she overlooked the possibility that the stranger might have put the supposition tentatively to Sherman and had been misled by her brother’s lack of denial. In fact, Carolina at this time was a very self-centred young woman. It was so of necessity. She had never been taught self-denial, nor permitted to be unselfish. Her father and mother, in yielding to every whim, had quite overlooked the fact that the pretty child’s character needed discipline, so that Carolina was selfish without knowing it. Quite unconsciously she placed her own wishes before those of any other, and regarded the carrying of her point as the proper end to strive for. No one had ever taught her differently. Cousin Lois had pampered her even more than her parents had done, and when she became dissatisfied with life, offered, as a remedy, change of scene.