After all, what is the use of all this microscopic anatomy in tracking the progress of heart-affairs? It seems to me that falling in love is as elementary a process as sitting down on an ice-pond. The rub is _how not_ to do it. If the novelists would but tell us _that_! Fortunately for me, I am not called on to do this, as I am not a novelist, but a bushwhackerish philosopher instead. And then—have I defrauded you, fair reader?—this is not a love-story! When I sat down to write it, I resolved to exclude, most rigidly, from its pages, all allusion to the tender passion; but, somehow, though against my will, my personages could not be kept free from its toils. My error was in bringing them together to spend Christmas in a Virginia country-house. The thing cannot be remedied, now, without an entire change of plot; so I shall have to let it go as it is. But the reader must credit the whole of this Episode of Love, which has forced itself into a theme of a different nature, to Alice Carter. Without her assistance I could not have written one word of it. She and Charley, to be entirely honest, are the real authors of this book. They have furnished most of the facts; I am to pocket all the glory. To show the part Alice has had in the matter, I will mention, by way of example, a conversation we had years after the occurrences herein described,—less, in fact, than eighteen months ago. We were talking of the good old times,—_Consule Planco_,—and happened to speak of this particular Christmas at Elmington, and especially of the week that preceded Christmas Eve. “Did you know as early as that, that a love-affair was brewing between Mary and the Don?” “Of course; at any rate, I feared it. You know how harum-scarum I was in those days?” “I do,” I replied, “if harum-scarum means irresistible.” “_You_ resisted me, at any rate; but, as I was going to remark, I had the regulation number of eyes about my person, and couldn’t well help seeing what lay straight before me.” “_I_ saw nothing!” “Ah, but you are a man! and remember that there are none so blind as those who can’t see!” “Then you think the affair was well under weigh before the end of the first week?” “With the Don, yes; and Mary was far more interested than she would allow herself to believe.” “Do you suppose that she was aware of the critical state of the Don’s affections?” “Of course she was; don’t you know that a woman always perceives that a man is falling in love with her long before he finds it out himself?” “Not to add,” I rejoined, “that she often perceives it when the man never _does_ find it out himself. By the way, why do women always express surprise at a proposal, as I am told they invariably do?” “Oh, that is to gain time; but rest assured, the surprise is about as real as that felt by a spider when a fly, after buzzing about her web for a time, and lightly grazing first one thread and then another, at last puts himself in a position where he may be made available.”