Mary Cary got up from the arm of the chair, her face incredulous. "Drinking? No, he hadn't been drinking. That is, I don't suppose he had. How could I tell? He talked a lot and laughed at the way Miss Honoria introduced him to all the family portraits, and the superior air in which she told him the history of each. I remember he called her Miss Icicle." "How did he happen to go there with you?" "We'd been to drive. He'd never seen the bluff and was interested in the battle fought there. I made him leave me at Miss Matoaca's, but he insisted on coming back to go out home with me. I was too tired to argue." She brushed her hair back as if tired again. "The rain kept us, and it was eight before we got off." "I have been told Miss Honoria was not the only one who gave information that afternoon. When was it? Day before yesterday, I believe. He made statements which Miss Honoria seemed to find more startling, if not so amusing, as those he made to her." "Did he?" Mary straightened one of the tall white candles in the candelabrum of many prisms on the end of the mantelpiece near which she stood. Her voice was not interested. "I believe he did tell me Miss Honoria was a cut-glass catechiser and very much interested in me." "He did not tell you his answers to your questions, I suppose?" "He certainly didn't. I cared for neither questions nor answers." She turned and looked at Miss Gibbie and laughed indifferently. "Mr. Fielding seems to have become suddenly important. You sound like a cross-examining lawyer. He goes to-morrow, and I never expect to see him again. Why this interest?" Miss Gibbie looked down at the tip of her slipper. Stooping, she straightened its bow. "Because of some very silly things I heard this afternoon." She put the other foot on the rung of the chair in front of her and carefully smoothed its ribbon with fingers that twitched. "Honoria Brockenborough claims he told her the money you have been spending in Yorkburg came from him, that the bonds were bought by his broker, and that he was Yorkburg's friend." Indifference slipped off as a garment, and, at Miss Gibbie's words, Mary Cary stiffened in rigid horror and unbelief. For a moment she stared at her as if not understanding, and her hand went to her throat. She choked in her effort to speak, and her eyes flashed fire. "I don't believe it!" The moment between her bearing and speaking was tense. "He said--" her breath came unevenly--"he said /he/ was Yorkburg's friend? /He/ had given money I had spent! He-- And I--alone in the world!" She threw out her hands as though to ward off some dreadful thing, then dropped in the big wing chair and buried her face in her arms. "Mary! Mary!" Miss Gibbie, terrified by the unexpected effect of her words, leaned over the twisting figure and put her hand upon it. The hand was shaken off. For the first time in her life Miss Gibbie Gault was helpless and afraid. "Mary!"