This, then, my reader, is the way we talk while we write this story; some account of which I thought might interest you; and it was after a discussion like that just recorded that we three agreed (by a strictly party vote of two to one) that our lovers must, for the rest of the book, be reduced to a single pair. We reached this decision at the conclusion of our labors on the forty-fifth chapter. We also settled it to our own satisfaction, that by the time our future readers had reached this stage in our story, they would probably be consumed with curiosity to know whether it was Lucy or Mary, that, with the Don, was to constitute that favored pair. The fact is, it had now begun to dawn upon us that (although _we_ knew better) we had actually given the supposed reader some right to look upon our mysterious hero as an emissary from Utah. So putting our heads together, we decided that it was time that he showed his colors. With a view to forwarding this end, therefore, I requested Alice and Charley to give me some account of a certain interview had between them, when the former had endeavored to discover from him which of the two girls had captured the Don. For Alice had often told me that she had made up her mind, on the night before that dinner at Oakhurst, to make an attack on the redoubtable Mr. Frobisher on that day, with this information in view. And she had formed this resolution owing to something that had occurred between Mary and herself. It appears that on the night previous to this dinner, that reserve which Mary had shown Alice ever since the Don had crossed her path had suddenly given way. The two girls had gone to bed together, as was their wont. The Don’s visits to Oakhurst had been growing in frequency, and it was understood that this dinner was given in his honor. “What, aren’t you asleep yet?” said Alice. “No,” said Mary. Something in her voice touched her friend. “You must not lie awake in this way,” said Alice. And she began to pass her fingers across Mary’s forehead and through her hair.