The case of lover No. 3 presents greater difficulties. When I recall certain passages of the preceding narrative, I am forced to acknowledge that, in the case of the Don, I have unwittingly entered into an implied obligation to my readers. Unwittingly, for I solemnly assure them that when (for instance) I described the gallant rescue of Alice and Lucy by the stalwart stranger, it did not so much as cross my mind what tacit promise I thereby held out. Had I been a novel-writer or even a novel-reader, instead of the philosopher and bushwhacker that I am, it could not have escaped me that by suffering two of my heroines to be valiantly rescued from deadly peril by a handsome, nay, a mysterious and hence painfully interesting young man, I had, in effect, signed a bond to bring about a marriage between the rescuer and one of the rescued, or both; the more charming of the two being reserved for the end of the book, the less to be thrown in earlier as a sort of matrimonial sop to Cerberus,—an hymeneal luncheon, as it were. Yes, I allowed one of my heroes to rescue two of my heroines, while a third gazed trembling upon the scene from her latticed window. Nay, worse; for whether drawn on insensibly by the current of events, or hurried thereto by the entreaties of my friend and collaborator, Alice, who, woman-like, declared that she would have nothing to do with my book unless I put some love in it,—whether inveigled, therefore, or cajoled, it is a fact that I have made allusion here and there, in the course of these pages, to such sighings and oglings and bosom-heavings and heart-flutterings, accompanied by such meaning starts and deep ineffable glances, that I am willing to admit what Alice claims: that it would be almost an actual breach of faith not to tell people what it all meant. “If you are going to write a novel, Jack” (I have been plain Jack since she married Charley), “why don’t you write one and be done with it?” “How many times must I tell you that I am not writing a novel, but a philosophico-bushwhackerian monograph on the theme—” “Bushwhackerian fiddlestick!” cried Alice, impatiently, but unable to suppress a smile at the rolling thunder of my title. “You may write your monograph, as you call it, but who would read it?” It was during this discussion that Alice agreed to edit the love-passages that illumine these pages. But _what_ love-passages? After much debate we effected a compromise. If she would engage to spare the reader all save a mere allusion to the heart-pangs of the jovial Jones, she should have full liberty to revel through whole chapters in the loves of the Don. “As for your little affair with Charley,” I added, “I agree to dress that up myself.” “Indeed, indeed, Jack, if you were to put Mr. Frobisher and myself in your book—and—and—make him—” “Make him—” (Here I smiled.) “You know, you villain!” “Stammer forth praises of your loveliness?” “You dare!” And so we are reduced to a single pair of lovers: the Don and—