“Five years ago! You can hardly expect me to recollect anything of serious importance concerning the love affairs of a young gentleman at college and a young lady who may have worn her hair in two plaits, tied at the ends with a big bow--” “Please, please!” she insisted. “As if I did not know how some girl has entered his very life, until he regards all other women with unheeding eyes, and even conducts himself towards me in what he considers to be the correct attitude of an engaged man. What is the spell she has cast upon him? Is she more beautiful than I, more sympathetic, more capable of devotion? Why is his father so troubled about him? Why have you been brought from Heidelberg to help in dispelling the cloud which has settled on him?” “Did Mr. Grier, senior, tell you that?” “No. No one tells me anything. Won’t _you_ have pity on me? I have the wildest dreams, but I know some of them are true. And I dreamed of you. I even saw you. I would have known you anywhere. When you came up the stairs with Karl to-night I could have shrieked aloud, but I dug my nails into my hands and restrained myself. See, here are the gloves I wore. I have changed them for others, but I kept them to prove to you how truly I am speaking.” She took from a pocket a crumpled pair of white gloves, _peau de chevreau_. The finger seams were burst, the palms cut in four half moons. So, though the words nearly choked me, I was forced to say soothingly: “I imagine you are troubling your pretty head about a matter of little moment, Miss Cazenove. I am quite certain you have no serious rival. Karl is the soul of honor--” She started to her feet and grasped my shoulder with a vehemence she was hardly conscious of. “You men everlastingly prate of honor. Honor explains everything. Provided Karl is scrupulously attentive to me he can take another woman to his heart, kiss her lips, her eyes, her hair, breathe her breath, inhale her fragrance, mingle his very soul with hers--that may be honorable to me, but it is the madness of love for her.” “Surely, Miss Cazenove, you are saying that which is not,” I cried, and I, too, facing her angrily, jumped up from the cushioned depths of the Chesterfield. “Am I? Then you do not understand Karl, and still less do you understand Maggie Hutchinson. Ah! _touché_? Think me a jealous woman, if you choose. I am, and I glory in it. But I have a woman’s wits as well, and you know in your heart I am not mistaken.” Something must be done to allay the tempest. I had to fling the sixth sense to the winds, and trust to the five of our common heritage to calm this excited beauty. “I speak in all honesty and truth,” I said, “when I tell you that, to the best of my belief, Karl Grier has neither seen, nor spoken to, nor written to Maggie Hutchinson since he was an undergraduate at Oxford.” She wrung her hands passionately.