It was looking up from this very same violet-scented letter that Charley saw the Don gazing out of the window with a troubled look. “What has Mary been writing to the Don?” he asked Alice. “He and I don’t compare notes, as I suppose you do. For some time past his face has been clouded after reading one of her letters. What does it mean?” Alice acquainted him, in her next, with the nature of the correspondence, and was surprised at the earnestness of Charley’s protest against the course Mary was pursuing. “If you have any influence over Mary, stop this thing; stop it instantly. She is treading on a mine. You and Mary are deceived by the gentleness and courtesy of his replies. You don’t know the man. I do; and, as Uncle Dick says about a certain mule on the place here, he isn’t the kind of man to projick ’long o’. ‘She am a sleepy-lookin’ animil, Marse Charley, and she look like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouf; no mor’n ’twouldn’t, eff you leff her ’lone; but I rickommen’ dat you don’t tetch her nowhar of a suddent, leastwise whar she don’t want to be tetched. De man what tickle dat muil in de flank, to wake her up, sort o’, will find hisself waked up powerful, hisself. Lightnin’ ain’t a suckumstance to dat d’yar self-same Sally-muil when she are tetched onproper to her notion. Don’t you projick ’long o’ Sally, I tell you, mun. Rrrrup! Umgh—umgh! Good-by, chile; for you’re a-gwine to kingdom come.’” Alice laughed so at this comical illustration that, most likely, she would have forgotten the injunction it enforced, but for a postscript in these words: “It is a habit with me—an affectation, if you will—always to say less than I mean. C. F.” Startled by this ominous hint, Alice fluttered across the street and into Mary’s room; and there was a field-day between them. The conflict lasted for hours, and seemed likely to end in a drawn battle,—a defeat, that is, for the attacking party. Alice’s old weapons, with which she had so often gained the victory over her less ready adversary, seemed to have lost their edge. In vain did she coruscate with wit, bubble with humor, caper about the room in a hundred little droll dramatic impromptus. Mary was unmoved, and sat with her eyes bent upon the floor. At last, with a flushed face, Alice rose to go; and it was then that she shot a Parthian arrow. “Very well, Mary.” And her eyes looked so dark that you would never have said that they were hazel. “Very well; have your way; but I should not have thought it of you!” “You are not angry with me?” said she, seizing her hand. “No, not angry; but disappointed. I never pretended to have anything heroic about me, Mary. I am only an every-day sort of a girl; but I can tell you this. If I loved a man—” “Don’t you?”