Such was Mary Rolfe in herself; and to know her as such has sufficed for the reader, so far. But a crisis is approaching in Mary’s life; and to foretell how people are going to act in crises, it is not enough to know what they are in themselves, merely. What they are is something; the where and the when are more. Do you see that pleasant, genial-looking man walking along the streets of a Southern city? Could anything be gentler than his look, kinder than his eye? Yet it was but the other day that he went out, deliberately, to a secluded spot called the Field of Honor, and sent a ball through the person of an excellent gentleman, who at the same time was addressing a bullet to his care. These worthy persons were no worse than other people (true, they were editors), but they lived in the South. That was the trouble. In the North the same man would have simply said, _you’re another_, and called the account square. And I, for one, applaud the North, and say she is right and the South wrong. No; if you would forecast the actions of men, you must be acquainted with their environment, as Herbert Spencer would call it. To use an illustration that this leader of modern scientific thought would not object to; you strike that white ball with your cue. The table being smooth, it would seem that it would maintain its initial direction till the initial force was exhausted, or at least till it struck the opposite cushion; but, lo! it strikes a light red ball that lies in its path, and off it flies at a tangent. If Mr. Spencer held the cue and were conducting the experiment in person, our illustration would now be at an end (for I am told that he is the worst billiard-player in all England); but let us suppose that that cue-thrust was delivered by one of those solid-headed young men (in shirt-sleeves) who delight in what they humorously call the scientific game. The white strikes the light red and darts away; but click! and off it speeds along a different track. It has carromed on the dark red.