o not understand the present generation," she finished, "and I
suppose that I was not meant to."

The little sigh in these words did great credit to Aunt Carola.

This vindication off my mind, and relieved by it of the more general
thoughts about Kings Port and the South, which the pantomime of Kings
Port's forced capitulation to Hortense had raised in me, I returned to
the personal matters between that young woman and John, and Charley. How
much did Charley know? How much would Charley stand? How much would John
stand, if he came to know?

Well, the scene in the garden now helped me to answer these questions
much better than I could have answered them before its occurrence. With
one fact--the great fact of love--established, it was not difficult to
account for at least one or two of the several things that puzzled me.
There could be no doubt that Hortense loved John Mayrant, loved him
beyond her own control. When this love had begun, made no matter.
Perhaps it began on the bridge, when the money was torn, and Eliza La
Heu had appeared. The Kings Port version of Hortense's indifference to
John before the event of the phosphates might well enough be true. It
might even well enough be true that she had taken him and his phosphates
at Newport for lack of anything better at hand, and because she was sick
of disappointed hopes. In this case, Charley's subsequent appearance
as something very much better (if the phosphates were to fail) would
perfectly explain the various postponements of the wedding.

So I was able to answer my questions to myself thus: How much did
Charley know?--Just what he could see for himself, and what he had
most likely heard from Newport gossip. He could have heard of an old
engagement, made purely for money's sake, and of recent delays created
by the lady; and he could see the gentleman--an impossible husband from
a Wall Street standpoint!--to whom Hortense was evidently tempering her
final refusal by indulgently taking an interest in helping along his
phosphate fortune. Charley would not refuse to lend her his aid in this
estimable benevolence; nor would it occur to Charley's sensibilities
how such benevolence would be taken by John if John were not "taken"
himself. Yes, Charley was plainly fooled, and fooled the more readily
because he had the old version of the truth. How should he suspect
there was a revised version? How should he discover that passion had now
changed sides, that it was now Jo