The world knows how fate uses her own instruments in her own way, frequently selecting far stranger ones than the delightful and wealthy Miss Avery.  Now for more than a year this accomplished girl had been thinking that if Charles Gardiner West had anything to say to her, it was high time that he should say it.  If she had not set herself to find out what was hobbling the tongue of the man she wanted, she would have been less than a woman; and Miss Avery was a good deal more.  Hence, when she had seen West with Sharlee Weyland, and in particular on the last two or three times she had seen West with Sharlee Weyland, she had watched his manner toward that lady with profound misgivings, of the sort which starts every true woman to fighting for her own.

Now Miss Avery had a weapon, in the shape of valuable knowledge, or, at any rate, a valuable suspicion that had lately reached her:  the suspicion, in short, which had somehow crept abroad as suspicions will, that West had done a certain thing which another man was supposed to have done.  Therefore, when they turned homeward in the soft dusk, her man having been brought to exactly the right frame of mind, she struck with her most languorous voice.

“How is that dear little Charlotte Weyland?  It seems to me I haven’t seen her for a year, though it was positively only last week.”

“Oh!  She seemed very well when I saw her last.”

So Mr. West, of the lady he was going to marry.  For, though he had never had just the right opportunity to complete the sweet message he had begun at the Byrds’ one night, his mind was still quite made up on that point.  It was true that the atmosphere of riches which fairly exuded from the girl now at his side had a very strong appeal for his lower instincts.  But he was not a man to be ridden by his lower instincts.  No; he had set his foot upon the fleshpots; his idealistic nature had overcome the world.

Miss Avery, sublimely unaware that Mr. West was going to offer marriage to her rival during the present month, the marriage itself to take place in October, indolently continued:—­

“To my mind she’s quite the most attractive dear little thing in town.  I suppose she’s quite recovered from her disappointment over the—­hospital, or whatever it was?”

“Oh, I believe so.  I never heard her mention it but once.”

West’s pleasant face had clouded a little.  Through her fluttering veil she noted that fact with distinct satisfaction.

“I never met that interesting young Mr. Surface,” said she, sweeping the car around a curve in the white road and evading five women in a surrey with polished skill.  “But—­truly, I have found myself thinking of him and feeling sorry for him more than once.”

“Sorry for him—­What about?”

“Oh, haven’t you heard, then?  It’s rather mournful.  You see, when Charlotte Weyland found out that he had written a certain editorial in the Post—­you know more about this part of it than I—­”