"Nor a very cheerful discovery for a man when he realizes the woman he loves is really a child! My dear Mary Cary, don't imagine the discoveries of character and temperament, of idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, are all on the woman's side. A man has to stand much. There are times when a woman may be an angel, but others when she behaves as if her ancestry was in a different direction. No wizard works such enigmatical changes as that master of human destinies called Love. Lives are glorified or ruined by it, and no man or woman experiences it who is not more or less, in the process of experiencing, some sort of a fool. They play with happiness as though it were a toy, and learn too late they've thrown away the only thing worth having in life. By-the-way, speaking of happiness, has this Mr. Horatio Fielding gone yet?" Mary Cary drew the big wing chair closer to the fire and sat upon its arm, one slippered foot on the fender. "No. He has not gone yet. He goes to-morrow, I believe." "He does!" Miss Gibbie looked at the face opposite, and over her own again swept indecision. During supper she had been too incensed to trust herself to tell what that afternoon had reached her ears, and yet it must to told. Were it possible to spare her she would spare. It was not possible. Kind friends were too ready to spread cruel things. It was best she should hear from her what must be heard. "This Mr. Fielding," she began, taking a seat on the far end of the big old-fashioned sofa, well out of the firelight. "Is he a man of honor? Can you depend upon statements he makes?" "A man of honor?" Miss Gibbie was looked at questioningly. "I don't know what you mean. He's abominably blatant and nouveau, and a terrible trial to talk to. But dishonorable--There's been no occasion for him to act dishonorably. His statements are mostly about his father's wealth and the kind of machine he likes best and his tailor in Piccadilly and cafes in Paris. I don't know how correct they are. I didn't half hear them. I could think of other things when he was talking, and generally brought them in for that purpose." "And yet for some days past you have been constantly with this abominably blatant and terribly trying person. You have driven home with him at eight o'clock at night." "I have. Why shouldn't I? I wouldn't have driven with him at four if I shouldn't have driven with him at eight. I did that the night I was caught by the storm at Miss Matoaca Brockenborough's. She was sick, and Mr. Fielding talked with Miss Honoria in the parlor while I was up-stairs with Miss Matoaca. I would have come here, but I had some important letters to write that night and didn't let Mr. Fielding come in. He drove back and left the horse at Mr. Pugh's stable." "Had he been drinking?"