es: and besides, had I not
seen enough? My eyes went down the river again where that launch had
gone; and I wondered if the wedding-cake would be postponed any more.

Regent Tom? Oh, yes, to be sure! John Mayrant had pointed out to me the
house where he had lived; he had been John's uncle. So the old gentleman
had left his estate in trust! And now--! But certainly Hortense would
have won the battle of Chattanooga!

"Don't be too sure about all this," I told myself cautiously. But there
are times when cautioning one's self is quite as useless as if somebody
else had cautioned one; my reason leaped with the rapidity of intuition;
I merely sat and looked on at what it was doing. All sorts of odds
and ends, words I hadn't understood, looks and silences I hadn't
interpreted, little signs that I had thought nothing of at first, but
which I had gradually, through their multiplicity, come to know meant
something, all these broken pieces fitted into each other now, fell
together and made a clear pattern of the truth, without a crack in
it--Hortense had never believed in that story about the phosphates
having failed--"pinched out," as they say of ore deposits. There she
had stood between her two suitors, between her affianced John and the
besieging Charley, and before she would be off with the old love and on
with the new, she must personally look into those phosphates. Therefore
she had been obliged to have a sick father and postpone the wedding two
or three times, because her affairs--very likely the necessity of making
certain of Charley--had prevented her from coming sooner to Kings Port.
And having now come hither, and having beheld her Northern and her
Southern lovers side by side--had the comparison done something to her
highly controlled heart? Was love taking some hitherto unknown liberties
with that well-balanced organ? But what an outrage had been perpetrated
upon John! At that my deductions staggered in their rapid course. How
could his aunts--but then it had only been one of them; Miss Josephine
had never approved of Miss Eliza's course; it was of that that Mrs.
Weguelin St. Michael had so emphatically reminded Mrs. Gregory in my
presence when we had strolled together upon High Walk, and those two
ladies had talked oracles in my presence. Well, they were oracles no
longer!

When the boat brought us back to the wharf, there were the rest of my
flowers unbestowed, and upon whom should I bestow them? I thought first