"Is it George Fowler?"

She bowed her head, and, though she did not blush, her eyes grew
radiant.

"And you have known him less than a year?"

Again she bowed her head without speaking. What was there, after all,
that she could say in justification of her behaviour?

A groan escaped him, smothered into a gentle murmur of protest. "And I
thought women were more constant than men!" he exclaimed with something
of the baffled and helpless feeling which had overtaken Uncle
Meriweather while he regarded Gabriella.

The generalization was not without interest for Gabriella.

"I thought so, too," she observed dispassionately. "I thought so, too,
and that is why it was such a dreadful surprise to me when it happened.
You yourself aren't more shocked and surprised than I was in the
beginning," she added.

"But you've got used to the thought, I suppose?"

"Well, one has to, you see. What else is there to do? I always
understood from mother"--she went on with the same eager interest, as if
she were stumbling upon new and important intellectual discoveries--"I
always understood that women never fell in love with men first--I mean
until they had had positive proof that their love would be returned. But
in this case that didn't seem to matter at all. Nothing mattered, and