Her lashes fell before his masculine gaze; she did not answer. About them was the sweet hush of the night. She was aware that he had moved nearer upon their bench; aware, too, of a faster beating of her heart. And then, quite suddenly, a new voice spoke, so close that both started sharply; a rather shy voice, yet one possessed of a certain vivid quality of life.

"I beg your pardon—but is this Miss Heth?"

They turned as upon one string. At the door of the summer-house stood the blurred figure of a man, bareheaded and tall. The light being chiefly behind him, he showed only in thin silhouette, undistinguishable as to age, character, and personal pulchritude. Stares passed between the dim trio.

"I am Miss Heth."

"Could you possibly let me speak to you—for a moment, Miss Heth? I realize, of course, that it's a great intrusion but—"

Canning started up, annoyed. Carlisle, without knowing why, was instantly conscious of a subtle sinking of the heart: some deep instinct rang a warning in the recesses of her being, as if crying out: "This man means trouble." She glanced at Mr. Canning with a kind of little shrug, suggesting doubt, and some helplessness; and he, taking this for sufficient authority, assumed forthwith the male's protectorship.

"Yes? What is it that you wish?"

The tall stranger was observed to bow slightly.

"As I say, I beg the favor of speaking to Miss Heth a few moments—privately. Of course I shouldn't venture to trespass so, if the matter weren't vitally important—"

"Who are you?" demanded the great young man with rather more impatience than seemed necessary. "And what do you wish to speak to her about? Speak plainly, I beg, and be brief!"

The two men stood facing each other in the faint light. Ten feet of summer-house floor was between them, yet something in their position was indefinably suggestive of a conflict.

"I should explain," said the intruder, dim in the doorway, "that I come as a friend of poor Dalhousie—the boy who got into all the trouble ... Ah...."

The involuntary ejaculation, briefly arresting his speech, was his perfect tribute to the girl's beauty now suddenly revealed to him. For Carlisle had unconsciously leaned forward out of the shadows of the bench just then, a cold hand laid along her heart.

"This afternoon," the man recovered, with a somewhat embarrassed rush. "I—I appreciate, I needn't say, that it seems a great liberty, to—"

"Liberty is scarcely the word," said Hugo Canning, fighting the lady's battle with lordly assurance. "Miss Heth declines to hear...."

But the stranger's vivid voice bore him down: "Do you, Miss Heth?... The situation is terribly serious, you see. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but—I—I'm afraid he may take matters into his own hands—"

Canning took an impatient step forward.

"Nevertheless, it's pure impudence for him to send to this lady, sneaking for favors now. Let's—"

"Mr. Canning, I—I'm afraid I ought to speak to him!"

"What?" said Mr. Canning, wheeling at the voice, as if stung.

"Oh!... That's kind of you!"

Carlisle felt, under Mr. Canning's incredulous gaze, that this sudden upwhirl of misfortune was the further refinement of cruelty. She hardly knew what to do. Scarcely thinkable as it was to dismiss Hugo Canning from her presence, it seemed even more impossible to pack off this nameless intruder. Inconceivable malignity of chance, indeed! Only one doubt of its all being settled and blown over had lingered on to trouble her; and now without warning this doubt rose and rushed upon her in the person of the sudden stranger—and before Mr. Canning, too. It occurred to her, with ominous sinkings of the heart, that she had relied mistakenly upon Dalhousie's gentlemanliness. What horrid intention was concealed behind these strange words about his taking matters into his own hands? And suppose she refused to see the emissary alone, and he then said: "Well, then, I'll just have to speak before your friend."... What would Mr. Canning think of her then? What was he going to think of her anyway?

Carlisle, having risen, answered her protector's gaze with a look of appealing sweetness, and said in a low, perturbed voice:

"I'm so dreadfully sorry. But I don't quite see how I could refuse just to—to hear what he has to say. Under the circumstances, would it—wouldn't it be simply unkind?"

Canning said, with small lightening of his restrained displeasure: "Ah! I'm to understand, then, that you wish to give this—gentleman an audience alone?"

It was, of course, the last thing on earth she desired, but God clearly was out of his heaven to-day, and Mr. Canning would like her better in the long run if he stepped aside for a space now. She said, with a restraint which did her credit:

"Could you forgive me—for five minutes? You must know how I—dislike this. But oughtn't I—"

The great parti gave an ironic little laugh.

"As you please, of course. I shall await your pleasure on the piazza."

And he stamped out and away into the moonlight, passing the silent intruder with a look which said loudly that he would have kicked him if it had promised to be worth the trouble.

The silver cord was loosed. The village-clock, quarter of a mile away, struck nine, and all's well. Hugo Canning's stately back receded. Coincidently the shabby-looking stranger who had displaced him stepped forward into the summer-house. The first thing Carlisle noticed about him was that he was lame.



V

Dialogue between V. Vivian, of the Slums, and Mr. Heth's Daughter (or his Niece); what the lovely Hun saw in the Mr. Vivian's eyes, just before he asked God to pity her.

Dalhousie's tall friend advanced with a limp, in silence. He halted at a courteous distance; it was seen that one hand held a soft hat, crushed against his side. A faint wave of the ethereal light immersed the man now, and Carlisle dimly descried his face. She observed at once that it did not seem to be a menacing face at all; no, rather was it kindly disposed and even somewhat trustful in its look. It was the second thing that she noticed about him.

Perhaps no girl in the world was less like the popular portrait of a fat horse-leech's daughter than this girl, Carlisle Heth. Surely no advance ever less resembled the charge of a hating prophet upon a Hun than this man's advance. Carlisle, to be sure, was never one to think in historical or Biblical terminology. But she did note the man's manner of approach upon her, and his general appearance, with an instant lifting of the heart. The whole matter seemed desperately serious to her, full of alarming possibilities, a matter for a determined fight. And she felt more confidence at once, the moment she had seen how the emissary looked, how he looked at her.

Chiefly for strategic reasons, she had sat down on the bench again, well back in the shadows. She did not speak; had no intention of speaking till speech might gain something. And the stranger, silent also, wore an air of hesitancy or confusion which was puzzling to her and yet quite reassuring, too. If he had come to say that Dalhousie would talk unless she did, would he be this sort of looking person at all?...

The man began abruptly; clearly nothing plotted out in advance.

"He's quite crushed.... I—I've just come from him...."

And then, hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, he retraced his steps for a better start.

"I should first say how kind it is of you to receive a—a stranger, in this way. I need hardly say that I appreciate it, greatly.... And I bring his hope that you can be merciful, and forgive him for what he did. He is badly broken, that I promise you.... It's all so curiously confused. But it doesn't seem that he can be quite so bad as they're saying here to-night...."

The stranger hesitated; he was gazing down with grave intentness.

"Miss Heth, Dal swears he can't remember the boat's upsetting at all."

His tone expressed, oddly, not so much a contradiction of anybody as a somewhat ingenuous hope for corroboration: Carlisle's ear caught that note at once. She was observing Jack Dalhousie's shabby friend as a determined adversary observes. He had moved a little nearer, or else the pale light better accustomed itself to him. And she saw that his face, though manifestly young, had an old-fashioned sort of look which seemed to go with his worn clothes; a quaint face, as she regarded it, odd-looking in some elusive way about the eyes, but, she felt surer and surer, not dangerous at all.

Now her gaze, shifting, had fastened upon his tie, which was undeniably quaint; a very large four-in-hand showing pictorially, as it seemed, a black sea holding for life a school of fat white fish. And then there came a lovely voice from the shadows—lovely, but did it sound just a little hard?...

"Perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, and tell me who you are, and what it is you want."

"Yes, yes! Quite so!" agreed the author of the Severe Arraignment, rather hastily....

A little easier said than done, no doubt. Yet it may be that one of the young man's inner selves still hovered over the belief that this girl must be Mr. Heth's (of the Works) niece, or haply a yet more distant relative....

"I mentioned that," said he, "because it was naturally uppermost in my mind. I—ah.... But to begin at the beginning, as you say.... I got a telegram in town, telling me that Jack Dalhousie was in serious trouble. It was from Hofheim, a fellow, a sort of druggist, who happened to know that I was one of his best friends. So I caught the six-ten train and Hofheim met me at the station. My name's Vivian...."

He stopped short, with an odd air of not having intended to stop at this point at all. So bystanders have watched the learning bicycle rider, irresistibly drawn to his doom against the only fixed object in miles. However, no association of ideas woke in the mind of the silent girl upon the bench. Not easily at any time did brick-throwing Socialists gain foothold there; and this day had been a disruptive one for her, beyond any in her experience.

"The name," hastily continued the young man, with an intake of breath, "probably conveys nothing to you. I—I merely mention it.... Well, Hofheim, this sort of—fellow, wasn't in the hotel when the—the occurrence took place, but he told me what everybody was saying, as we came up in the 'bus together. I feel very sure you can have no idea.... Shall I repeat his story? I don't, of course, want to trouble you needlessly."

"Do."

So bidden, he swiftly epitomized the narrative told him by the fellow Hofheim, who had got it at fifth or sixth hand after Mrs. Heth's striking of the right note. The Hofheim rendering seemed to include such details as that Dalhousie (being an entire stranger to Miss Heth) had overthrown her boat with homicidal hands, and that, as he swam away, he had laughed repeatedly and maniacally over his shoulder at the girl's agonized screams.

"They don't say that he struck you—with an oar," the man concluded, sad and satirical. "I believe that's the only detail of the sort they omit.... As a matter of fact, Miss Heth, Dal says he never heard you scream at all."

Then he clearly paused for a reply, perhaps a reassuring burst; but there was only silence. The harried girl on the bench was thinking, intently but with some bewilderment. Somewhat aghast as she was (truth to tell) at the way in which the minor variations had been maliciously distorted, her attention had been closely engaged by the curious way in which Mr. Dalhousie's friend was going at things. Why did he sound less like a challenge and a threat than like somebody whistling hopefully to keep up his courage?

The question irresistibly emerged. Carlisle's slim fingers furled and unfurled the end of her mermaiden's scarf, and she looked up at the tall stranger in the dusk and sweetly spoke for the third time.

"But I don't understand. If he has told you all about it, I—I don't see why you have come to me at all."

Then the man appeared to recollect that he had omitted the most important part of his narrative—of course she didn't understand, no wonder!—and spoke with some eagerness.

"I should have explained that in the beginning!—only of course I don't like to trespass too far on your time.... You see—unfortunately—Dal's hardly in position to speak about the matter at all. I—"

He paused, as if seeking how to put it, and then spoke these doubt-destroying words:

"It is very perplexing, but the truth is—he says so himself—he doesn't know at all what took place."

"Oh!... He doesn't know!"

"I don't wonder you're astonished at his saying so," said the young man, in quite a gentle way. "And yet I do believe him absolutely...."

He now explained, in well-selected phrases, that Jack Dalhousie had been very drunk when he boarded the boat, having taken a running start on the evening preceding. Though he might have seemed normal enough, through long experience in control, he was actually quite irresponsible; and drink had played strange tricks with his mind before now. The boy could remember getting into the boat, it seemed; remember that—ah—that she had objected (very properly) to his presence; remember standing up in the boat, very angry, and the wind blowing in his face. The next thing he remembered was being in the water, swimming away. And then, when he landed, a man standing there on shore cursed him and struck him in the face.... Then he had looked out over the water; he saw the upset sailboat and the boatman rowing out, and the people, and it rushed over him what he must have done. Till then, he said, he had never dreamed that anything had happened. He could hardly believe it, even with the evidence of his own eyes. Then later Hofheim, the sort of fellow, had gone up to see him, and told him what people were saying, which so much more than confirmed his worst suspicions. Hofheim was a stranger, but he meant well....

Dalhousie, in short, was in the singular position of having to implore others to assure him that he hadn't done all these terrible things. And it appeared that Miss Carlisle Heth was the one person in the world who could possibly give him that assurance.

So spoke the stranger. That he had scattered lifelines, that all his oratory had come agrapple with nature's first law, evidently did not cross his mind. He gazed down at the girl's dimly limned face, and his gaze seemed full of an unconquerable hopefulness.

"The boy's behavior has been inexcusable in any case," he said. "And be sure he's been punished, and will be punished severely. But ... it must be that either the—the trouble didn't happen at all as this story says it did, or if—at the worst—it did happen that way, Dalhousie was simply out of his mind, quite insane, and didn't know what he was doing. He isn't, of course, a ruffian or a coward. Won't you help to make them understand that?"

The girl raised her eyes, which in the twilight were darker than the 'depth of water stilled at even.'

"I don't see the necessity for that," she said, in a firm voice. "I—I'm afraid I can't consent to be involved in it any further."

Over the little summer-house hung the sweet beauties of the serene night. About it stretched the calm lawn in chequers of large faint brightness and gigantic shadows. Within it stood the tall stranger, rooted in his tracks. Then it seemed to occur to him that there was some misunderstanding; that at least, in his anxiety about his friend, he hadn't allowed sufficiently for the properly outraged feelings of the lady—this so unreasonable-looking daughter of Mr. Heth of the Works, or his niece....

"It's all tremendously trying for you, I know," he said, with the same sort of gentleness. "I assure you the situation has distressed me greatly—from every aspect. And I think it's most kind and—and generous of you to let me speak with you when you must feel that you've been so badly treated.... But you see—as it stands, you are involved in it, really, more than any one else. I'm sorry, but in fact the whole issue is in your hands."

"I can't see that. He has given you his—his version of what took place. No one will prevent him from saying the same thing to whomever he wishes."

"But who will believe him?"

Carlisle perceived a rhetorical question, though she didn't know it under that name; she made no reply. She would really have preferred no more questions of any sort—what was the use of them? In her, as in all the Maker's creatures, the instinct for self-preservation was planted to work resistlessly. Small wonder, indeed, if, in the unexpected discovery that dependence on Dalhousie's dubious gentlemanliness was unnecessary, the uprush of relief should have swept away all lesser considerations, flooded down all doubts. All was settled again in a trice, as by a miracle: the miraculous agent here being, not the Deity (as she vaguely suspected), but only the Demon Rum, he who had taught the frail lad Dalhousie to be so mistrustful of himself ...

She had had a harassing day, including three momentous tete-a-tetes with three different and widely variegated men, mostly comparative strangers: Jack Dalhousie, Mr. Canning, and now this Mr. Vivian. She was very tired of being dogged and nagged at and interfered with, and she wanted very much to terminate this interview, which she saw now had been extorted from her by a pretty sharp piece of deception. And through her mind there skipped a beckoning thought of Mr. Canning, conceived as feverishly pacing the piazza ...

"You see, his defence," Mr. Vivian was saying, with some signs of nervousness, "is merely his own word that he had no idea you were upset. I believe him absolutely, because I know he wouldn't lie, and he admits, to his own disadvantage, that his memory isn't at all clear. But—it's all so muddled and confused somehow—I'm afraid everybody else will think that a rather silly fabrication, invented by a desperate man to put himself in the best light possible. That is—unless his word is corroborated."

His inflection invited remarks, nay, urged them, but there was only silence.

And then within V. Vivian, M.D., there woke a cold doubt, and gnawed him.

"Miss Heth—I must ask—for the whole moral question hangs on this ... Did he know that you were upset?"

Miss Heth cleared her throat, preparatory to rising. She saw now that she ought never to have consented to talk with this strange man at all. Mamma would have known that in advance.

"It is—rather absurd—for me to be asked to decide what he knew. He has assured you that—"

"But—I don't make myself clear, I see—the fact is that yours is the only assurance that will carry the smallest weight on that point.... He wasn't—may I ask?—actually in the boat when it went over, was he?"

"N-no. As to that—I believe he had just got out, but—"

"Did you think at the time that he knew you were upset?"

"Unfortunately, I am not a mind reader," she began with dignity, objecting seriously to these obstacles in the way of ending the interview. "Thrown without warning into the water, I could not look into his thoughts and see—"

"Quite so. But did he show in any way that he knew you were upset?"

A kind of chill had crept into the stranger's voice. The two young people gazed at each other. The man had strange eyes (they were the third thing she had noticed about him), gray, she thought, and gifted with an odd sort of translucence, singular and speaking.

"Let me see. No, he did not. That is what I said at the time—that he didn't take the slightest notice of me—"

"He swears he never dreamed anything was wrong till he landed. Don't you feel that that's quite possible, at least? Or.... did you scream out for his help, so loudly that he must have heard you, if he'd been himself?"

"The—the first few minutes in the water were very confusing. I can't pretend to say exactly what I did or didn't do. I had to think about saving my life—"

"Of course. But if you'd screamed a number of times in saving your life, you would be likely to remember it, wouldn't you?"

"Really I can't acknowledge your right to—"

"Miss Heth—why didn't you scream?"

His swift cross-examination touched the quick of her spirit; and she came to her feet, trembling a little, and feeling rather white.

"I will not allow you to catechise me in this way. I will not...."

Dr. Vivian, from the Dabney House, over the Gulf, stood still, quite silenced....

The thought had struck V. Vivian, and shot him down, that this girl was lying, deliberately suppressing the truth that meant more than life to Dal. She hadn't screamed. Dal hadn't known she was upset.... Yet was it thinkable? In the fiercest denouncing of the yellowest Huns, who had ever dreamed anything so base of them as this? Lying? With that face like all the angels, that voice like a heavenly choir?...

The tall doctor saw that his suspicion was unworthy and absurd. His was no simple choice between his friend's shameful cowardice, and this girl's criminal falsehood. No, Dal was crazy-drunk at the time, and himself cried out in his misery that the worst that they said of him was probably true. And even supposing that this girl was no more than a fiend in seraphic shape, what conceivable reason could she have for such infamous suppression? Motive was unimaginable.... No, the fault must be his own. He had pressed too hard, pried too tactlessly and inquisitively, not made her understand sufficiently the dire swiftness of the poor boy's need....

These two stood face to face. Carlisle saw that Jack Dalhousie's friend was becoming excited; but then, so was she. The man spoke first, in a low, hurried voice:

"I don't mean to catechise—indeed, I don't. You must try to forgive me for the liberties I seem to be taking.... The thing's so serious, so pitiful. This story already flying around back in town—making him a base coward—he'll never live it down. And it's to-night or never, a—a misstatement travels so fast and far, and has so long a life—"

"You should have reminded him of all this," said Carlisle, her rounded breast rising and falling, "before he got into my boat."

"Oh, you have a right to say that! He's been wrong, insanely wrong! But does he deserve disgrace—ostracism—ruin? You alone stand between him and—"

"I don't feel that it—it's right for me to be brought into it further. I've explained that. And I must ask—"

"But you are in it already, you see. Whatever anybody does or leaves undone, now and for the future—you are in it...."

The enemy paused, gazing at her; and then suddenly, before she could make just the right opening to go past him, he abandoned restraint, and flung himself upon entreaties.

"Couldn't you make a statement—just a little statement—saying that you feel certain he didn't know the boat was upset? that perhaps in the excitement you forgot to scream?—that you know he wouldn't have left you if he'd understood you were in trouble? Couldn't you at least give him the benefit of the doubt?—say or do something to show you've no bitter feeling toward him?—"

"Did he show any regard for my feelings? I must ins—"

"All the finer is your opportunity—don't you see?... Even strain the truth a little for him, if that's necessary. God," said the shabby young man, quite passionately, "would count it a virtue, I know, for it's now or never to save a man.... Couldn't you do that? I promise you you won't be bothered any more about it. I know how awfully hard it's all been for you. Couldn't you say something to help him a little?"

Miss Heth, facing him, imperceptibly hesitated.

For a second, offended though she was by his religious reference (she never heard the name of God mentioned in polite society), this quaint begging Mr. Vivian had her upon the balance. Her flying thoughts swept down the parting of the ways. But they flew swiftly back, stabbing all hesitancies....

She wished as much as any one that it had all been started differently, as it might have been had she been perfectly certain in advance that no one would dare say anything the least bit horrid about her. It was not her fault that gossip was so notoriously unreliable. And now it was simply impossible to rake up the whole subject again, just when it was all settled, and go through another long explanation with mamma. Of course she didn't believe all this about Dalhousie's being ruined and disgraced forever: that was just the man's way of working on her feelings and trying to frighten her. She knew very well that the whole thing would blow over in a few days, if just quietly left to itself.

And what use, whispered the returning thoughts, would the unknown make of the "little statement" he begged so for? What would mamma say, for instance, to a black-typed piece-in-the-paper in the "Post" to-morrow? And what of Mr. Canning—nudged the wise thoughts—the happiness symbol on the piazza, whose princely feet were so plainly twitching to thunder behind?...

No; clearly the only sensible thing to do was to end all the talk and quibbling at once, definitely. Carlisle took a step forward over the dim chequered floor, resolute as her mother.

"I can't add anything to what I've already said. I cannot let you detain me any longer."

Her advance had brought her fully into what light there was, falling mistily through lattice and door. And at the look in her eyes, young Dr. Vivian's hands fell dead without a struggle at his sides. His tall figure seemed mysteriously to shrink and collapse inside his clothes. He said, oddly, nothing whatever. Yet an hour's oration could not have conveyed more convincingly his sense of irreparable disaster.

The instantaneous cessation of his verbal flow curiously piqued the girl's attention. Face to face as they stood, she was struck quite sharply with an elusive something that seemed to cling to this man's look, a subtle enveloping wistfulness which she had vaguely noticed about him before, which somehow seemed, indeed, only the sum of all that she had noticed about him before. It may have been this look that briefly checked her withdrawal. An odd desire to justify herself somewhat more clearly fluttered and stirred within her. Or—who can say?—perhaps this was no more than the beautiful woman's undying desire to appear at advantage before every man, however far beneath her.

"You—you must not think me unfeeling," she said in a sweet hurried voice. "I want to be as considerate as possible. I am terribly sorry for him—terribly—and you must tell him so, from me. But I—I am in a peculiar position. I am not free to—"

"I see. I understand now."

His strange tone fell upon her ears as a challenge, quiet though it was; and it was a challenge which Carlisle, though instantly regretting her generosity (when she might just have walked away), saw no entirely dignified way of avoiding.

"You see what?" she said, faltering a little. "I don't know what you mean."

The man replied slowly, almost as if he were thinking of something else, and the thought rather hurt him:

"I see your only thought is to gain some point for yourself—you alone know what—no matter what pain your silence may give to others.... Ah, that's sad...."

Angry and a little frightened, too, Carlisle Heth drew her gossamer shawl more closely about her shoulders, with a movement that also wore the air of plucking together her somewhat wavering hauteur.

"You are at liberty to think and say what you please," she said, distantly, and with a slight inclination of her head started past him.

But he did not seem to hear the dismissal order; stood unmoving, blocking her progress; and looking up with now tremulous indignation, Carlisle ran once more full on the battery of his speaking eyes....

Perhaps it was not difficult to guess what John the Baptist would have said, in such a case as this: but then the young man V.V. was not thinking of John the Baptist now. He was not feeling grim at all at this moment; not fierce at all. So in his look there was to be seen nothing of the whiplash, not one thing reminiscent of the abhorring fanatic on the outskirts of the city. His eyes were filled, indeed, with a sudden compassion; a compassion overflowing, unmistakable, and poignant. And from that look the richly dressed girl with the seraph's face instantly averted her gaze.

She heard a voice: the lame stranger speaking as if to himself.

"All that beauty without, and nothing at all within.... So lovely to the eye, and empty where the heart should be.... God pity you, poor little thing...."

And then Carlisle passed him quickly and went out of the summer-house upon the lawn. The escape, this time, presented no difficulties. For the last syllable had hardly died on the young man's lip before self-consciousness appeared to return upon him, staggering him, it may be, at the words of his mouth. He turned, abruptly, and fled in the other direction.

So the audience in the moonlit summer-house concluded precipitately, with the simultaneous departure of both parties from opposite exits. Carlisle Heth went hurrying across the lawn. Within her, there was a tumult; but her will was not feeble, and her sense of decorum and the eternally fitting hardly less tenacious. Strongly she ruled her spirit for the revivifying remeeting that awaited her just ahead....

But it was not Mr. Canning's voice which greeted her as she stepped up on the hotel piazza. It was the low, angry challenge of her soldier-mother, nipped in the act of charging upon the summer-house.

"Carlisle!... In heaven's name, what have you been doing?"

Facing mamma on the deserted piazza-end, Carlisle explained in a hurried sentence that Mr. Dalhousie had sent a pleading friend to her, whom she had felt obliged to see....

"Are you mad to say such a thing? Was it for wild antics of this sort that I threw everything to the winds to bring you down here?"

"Oh, mamma—please!" said Carlisle, her breath coming fast. "I've had about enough.... I—I couldn't run the risk of his starting heaven knows what scandalous story. Where is Mr. Canning?"

Mamma looked as if she wanted to shake her.

"You may well ask," she said, savagely, and turned away.

"I do ask," said Carlisle, with returning spirit. "Where is he?"

Mrs. Heth wheeled on her.

"Did you suppose he would hang about kicking his heels for hours while you hobnobbed with low men in dark summer-houses? He just excused himself on the ground of a cold caught on the piazza, and has retired for the night. You shall do the same. Come with me."

Carlisle went with her.

* * * * *

And next morning, Sunday, the very first news that greeted the two ladies, upon their appearance for a late breakfast, was that Mr. Canning and Mr. Kerr had left the Beach for town by the nine-twenty-two train.



VI

Of Carlisle's Bewilderment over all the Horrid Talk; of how it wasn't her fault that Gossip was so Unreliable; of the Greatest Game in the World; also, of Mr. Heth, who didn't look like a Shameless Homicide.

The explosion that followed the boat occurrence at the Beach came as a complete surprise to the heroine of the small affair. When she had terminated the interview in the summer-house, she understood that she was giving the signal for talk to cease and all trouble to proceed to blow over. The want of coooeeration on the part of talk and trouble was gross, to say the least of it. The tide of excited questions and comment that poured in on and around Carlisle, upon her return to town on Monday, resembled the breaking of flood-gates. Her small and entirely private misadventure had become her world's sensation. And within a day there came a climax which secretly astonished and frightened her not a little. The primal blood-tie itself was severed for offended righteousness' sake. The proud old widower, Colonel Dalhousie, already sorely tried by his son's wildnesses, could not stomach his flagrant cowardice. It was shouted about the town that he had cut Jack off with a curse, and turned him finally out of his house.

Unplagued by the curses of imagination, Carlisle had, indeed, anticipated nothing in the least like this. She was dazed by the undreamed hubbub. For the first few days after her home-coming, she remained very closely in the house, to avoid all the worrying and horrid talk; and one day, the day Mattie Allen ran in with popping eyes to tell her about Jack Dalhousie, she pretended to be sick and stayed in bed, and really did feel extremely badly.

In these days of uneasiness, Carlisle wished far more than ever that the whole thing had been started differently; and she wondered often, and somewhat fearfully, if Dalhousie's friend, Mr. Vivian, would try to force himself on her again. That did not happen; nothing happened; and the more and more calmly she came to think about it all, the more clearly the girl saw that she personally was not to blame for the misunderstanding. It was plainly seen as one of those unfortunate occurrences which, while regretted by all, herself as much as anybody, you simply could not do a single thing about. And if it had seemed impossible to rake it all up again even that night, how much more unrakable was it now, when days had passed, and everybody had accepted everything, for better or worse, as it was? Fate and gossip had proved too strong. Deplorable, indeed; but it was to be, that was all.

It was very plain, of course, that all the initial excitement and pother could not possibly last. Withhold food from gossip, and it starves and dies. Carlisle simply stayed quiet and held her tongue; and as the days passed without more developments of any sort, she found her philosophical attitude thoroughly justified by events. Town-talk, that bugbear of the delicate-minded, shot off first to the Hoover divorce, and then to the somewhat public disagreement between the Governor of the State and Congressman Hardwicke, at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the visiting President; finally to a number of things. By the time six weeks had passed, the Beach had dropped completely from the minds of a fickle public. Dalhousie, it seemed, had considerately vanished. Talk ceased. The boat trouble blew over, much as the boat had done....

About this time, namely, about the middle of the seventh week, one of Willie Kerr's cryptic messages lay beside Mrs. Heth's breakfast plate on a morning. It ran:

I think he will come at 5.30 o'clock Wednesday. Better arrive first?

W.K.

Willie's cipher (he liked to write as if he lived in Russia, with the postal spies after him like hawks) was no mystery to Mrs. Heth, she being, in a certain measure, its inventor. Having taken the telegraphic brevity upstairs to show to Carlisle, she disappeared into the telephone booth, to rearrange her afternoon. If all subscribers to the telephonic system were as tireless users as she, probably fewer people would have made large fortunes by the timely purchase of forty dollars worth of stock.

This was a Wednesday morning in mid-December. Carlisle, recuperating from a gay debutante rout on the evening preceding, remained in bed. By this time the "season" was well under way: all signs promised an exceptionally gay winter, and Carlisle was, as ever, in constant demand. She had meant to spend the morning in bed anyway, and then besides her mother had pointed out the necessity of being fresh for the afternoon....

From the moment of their abrupt parting at the Beach, Carlisle had not set eyes upon Mr. Canning, though he was known to have lingered as a house-guest all through the following week. The circumstance had surprised her considerably at the time, until she had thought out some satisfactory explanations for it. To-day her maidenly thoughts assumed a wholly prospective character, very agreeable and cheery. Mr. Canning, having arrived yesterday from some southerly resort of his choice, was again staying at the Payne fort on the Three Winds Road, his reported design being to ride a few times with the Cold Run hounds, otherwise barricading himself as unsocially as before. Still, he expected to remain for a week at least, which was very nice; and under these circumstances it was as natural as possible that his connoisseurship should be asked to pass judgment on the new little bachelor apartment in Bellingham Court, where his friend Kerr was just comfortably installed.... Where, also, no impossible stranger could intrude himself upon the company of his betters, with revivalist vocabulary and killjoy face.

The clock stood at eleven. The drawn shades imparted a restful dimness to the bedroom, but the reliable maid Flora had been in to shut the windows and start a merry fire in the grate. This room had been done over last year in gray and old rose, with the "suit" in Circassian walnut, and wainscoted walls which harmonized admirably. It was a charming cloister, all most captivating to the eye, with the possible exception of the dressing-table, which rather bristled with implements and looked just a thought too businesslike.

Carlisle loafed and invited her soul. Her glorious ash-gold hair, whose habit of crinkling from the roots was so exasperating to contemporaries of her own sex, swept loose over the pillows, charmingly framing her face....

While the Beach episode itself was now long since closed and done with, it was not unnatural that the memory of Dalhousie's friend, the Mr. Vivian, should have remained in Carlisle's mind, for Mr. Vivian had addressed such words to her as had never before sounded upon her ears. These words had clung by their sheer astounding novelty. To have God petitioned to pity you by a shabby nobody in a pictorial tie: here was an experience that invited some elucidation. For a time the girl's thoughts had attacked the nobody's sincerity: he was merely failure pretending to despise success. But, not ungifted at self-suasion though she was, she had not seemed to find solid footing here; and she had early been driven irresistibly to quite a different conclusion. Evidently this man Mr. Vivian was a queer kind of street-preacher type, victim of a pious mania which rendered him dangerously unsound in the head. This, obviously, was the truth of the matter. On no other theory could his pitying her be satisfactorily explained.

It was true that, with the dying down of her own sense of vague ambient perils, she herself had come once more to feel dreadfully sorry for Jack Dalhousie, and even to admit in her meditations that she could have afforded to be more magnanimous in defending him from gossip. But then that did not at all change the fact that Dalhousie deserved the severest punishment for all the trouble and worry he had brought her. It clearly was not right, was not moral, to make things too easy for wrongdoers. She had gradually come to see herself as a custodian of the moral law in this quarter, a tribunal of justice which, while upholding the salubriousness of punition, yet strives to keep as large and generous as it can.

Therefore it followed as the night the day that Mr. Vivian, who could work himself up to the condition of feeling sorry for her as she discharged her painful duties (while admiring her loveliness), was a sort of camp-meeting madman. He was an advanced kind of religious fanatic, nearly in the foaming stages, something like a whirling dervish. His emotional gibberings were beneath the notice of sane, wholesome people.

Still, in lengthening retrospect, Carlisle had become quite dissatisfied with the manner in which she had permitted the summer-house interview to terminate. It was somewhat galling to recall the tameness with which she had allowed a Shouting Methodist such a last word as that, entirely unreproved. Because unreproved, the staggering word had stuck fast; in spite of all efforts, it remained as a considerable irritation in the background of her mind. Many times she had resolved that, if she ever saw the man again (which seemed unlikely, as nobody appeared ever to have heard of him), she would make a point of saying something pretty sharp and definite to him, showing him how little she cared for the opinions of such as he. And then, at other times, she decided that it might be best simply to ignore the man altogether, turning her back with dignity, after perhaps one look such as would completely show him up. Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say....

She rose, in excellent spirits, shortly after noon, and began an unhurried toilet. The toilet was so unhurried, indeed, that she had hardly finished and descended to the family sitting-room on the second floor when her father's latch-key was heard clicking in the front door. This sound was the unofficial luncheon-gong. The House of Heth proceeded to the dining-room, where Mr. Heth kissed his daughter's cheek in jocund greeting.

"Good-afternoon, Cally! And you just up—well, well! Times have changed—

"'Early to bed, early to rise— That makes us all healthy, Wise and wealthy—'

"That was my father's rule, and Lord, he kept us to it...."

Mrs. Heth, already seated, bit her lip slightly, which seemed to confer prominence upon her little mustache. Her consort's habit of quoting, and especially of misquoting, was trying to her, but she now knew it to be incurable, like her daughter's occasional mannerism. She sat as usual rather silent, plotting out the next few hours of her busy time, her remarks being chiefly of a superfluous managerial nature to that thoroughly competent African, Moses Bruce.

Carlisle, having so lately risen, ate but a dejeuner. Mr. Heth, on the contrary, attacked the viands with relish, restoring waste tissues from two directors' meetings, a meeting of the Convention Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, and an hour in his office at the bank. He was a full-bodied, good-looking, amiable-mannered man, of sound stock and excellent digestion, and wore white waistcoats the year round, and fine blond mustaches, also the year round. He certainly did not look to the casual eye like a shameless homicide, but rather like an English country gentleman given to dogs. He was fifty-four years old, a hard worker for all his indolent eye, and his favorite diversion was about twelve holes of golf on Sunday morning, and his next favorite one table of bridge by night in the library across the hall.

Greetings over, Mr. Heth said "Catch!" to his wife and daughter, referring to the ten-dollar goldpieces from the directors, and remarked that he hadn't been near the Works for two mornings, and that money made the mare go. A sober look touched his fresh-colored face as he voiced these observations, but then he was tired and hungry, and nobody noticed the look anyway. This fashion of the 1.30 luncheon had been one of the earliest of their Yankee innovations which had caused the rising Heths to be viewed with alleged alarm by ante-bellum critics, dear old poorhouse Tories who pretended that they wanted only to live as their grandsires had lived. The Heths, unterrified, and secure from the afternoon torpor inflicted on up-to-date in'ards by slave-time regime, dispatched the exotic meal with the cheerfulness of Property.

"Effete, Cally,—that's what this age is," said Mr. Heth, pushing back his chair, and producing his gold toothpick. "Everybody looking for somebody else's neck to hang on to. And makin' a lot of grafters out of our poor class. Look at this Labor Commissioner and his new-fangled nonsense. Nagging me to spend Lord knows how many thousands, making the plant pretty and attractive for the hands. Voted for the fellow, too."

"I never heard of such a thing. What sort of things does he want you to do, papa?"

"Turkish baths and manicures and chicken sandwiches, I guess. I don't listen to his rot. Law's good enough for me. Point I make is that's the spirit of the poor nowadays. I pay 'em wages that would have been thought enormous a hundred years ago, but are they satisfied? Not on your life!..."

Winter sunshine, filtering in through cream-colored curtains, touched upon those refinements with which the prosperous civilize and decorate the brutal need: upon silver, growing flowers, glittering glass, agreeable open spaces, and fine old mahogany. It was an exceptionally pleasant room. The Heths might be "improbable people," as Mrs. Berkeley Page was known to have said on a certain occasion and gone unrebuked, but their material taste was clearly above reproach. And all this was to their credit, proving efficiency in the supreme art, that of living. For the Heths, of course, were not rich at all as the word means nowadays: they were far indeed from being the richest people in that town. Their merit it was that they spent all they had, and sometimes a little more; and few persons lived who could surpass Mrs. Heth in getting a dollar's worth of results for each dollar expended....

Carlisle and her father chatted pleasantly about the remarkable spirit of the poor, and the world's maudlin sentiment towards it and them. The lovely maid professed herself completely puzzled by these problems.

"We're always giving them money," she pointed out, spooning a light dessert in a tall glass, "or getting up bazaars for them, or sending them clothes that have lots more wear in them. And what do they do in return, besides grumble and riot and strike and always ask for more? And they stay poor just the same. What is going to happen, papa?"

Mr. Heth lit a cigar—not one of the famous Heth Plantation Cheroots. He requested Cally not to ask him.

"Never be satisfied," said he, "till they strip us of everything we've worked our lives away earning. They'll ride in our motor-cars and we'll sit in their workhouse. That'll be nice, won't it? How'll plain little girls like that, eh?"

She was the apple of papa's eye; and she rather enjoyed hearing him talk of his manifold business activities, which was a thing he was not too often encouraged to do. To-day the master of the Works was annoyed into speech by recent nagging: not merely from the Commissioner of Labor, but from the Building Inspector, who had informally stopped him on the street that morning....

"Don't you think, papa," Carlisle said sweetly, "that it will all end in something like the French Revolution?"

Mr. Heth thought it extremely likely.

"Well," said he, "I shan't be bothered by their college folderol. O'Neill's easy enough managed. All I need to do is invite him and Missus O. to dinner."

"Who's O'Neill?" demanded Mrs. Heth, gliding in.

For the second time during the meal, she had been absent from the table, on a telephone call. She always answered these summonses personally, regardless of when they came, appearing to fear that otherwise she might miss something.

"And who," she added, "is going to invite him to dinner?"

Mr. Heth explained, and said that nobody was. He'd only mentioned the possibility if the fellow ever got troublesome, which was most unlikely. His wife was a climber—social bug, you know. "Pays to know your man, eh, Cally?..."

"I should say! And O'Neill's wife manages him?"

"Don't they always?" said he, pinching her little pink ear. And thereupon he bethought himself of a thoroughly characteristic quotation, which he rendered right jovially:

"'Pins and needles, pins and needles, When a man marries, his trouble begins,'

"As the fellow says," concluded Mr. Heth; and so departed for The Fourth National Bank. Mrs. Heth, reminding her daughter about being fresh for the afternoon, glided to her writing-desk in the library. Carlisle confronted three hours of leisure before the prospective Great Remeeting. She went to the telephone, and called up her second-best girl-friend, Evelyn McVey. It developed that she had nothing special to say to Evey, or Evey to her. However, they talked vivaciously for twenty minutes, while operators reported both lines "busy" and distant people were annoyed and skeptical.

That done, Carlisle went to the upstairs sitting-room, and sat by the fire reading a Christmas magazine, which had come out on Guy Fawkes day, the 5th of November. Presently she slipped off her pumps the better to enjoy the heat: and assuredly there is nothing surprising in that. It is moral certainty that Queens and Empresses (if we knew all) dearly love to sit in their stocking-feet at times, and frequently do so when certain that the princesses-in-waiting and lady companions of the bath are not looking. The telephone interrupted Carlisle twice, but she toasted her arched and silken little insteps well, read three stories, and thought that one of them was quite sweet. Where she got her hands and feet she often wondered. They were so clearly neither Heth nor Thompson. By this time her unwearied mother had gone out to "get in" three or four calls; also an important Charities engagement at Mrs. Byrd's, where Carlisle was to call for her in the car at five o'clock sharp, for their visit to the Bellingham. Carlisle now became conscious of a void, and ate five chocolates from a large adjacent box of them, the gift of J. Forsythe Avery. Then she yawned delicately, and picked up "Sonnets from the Portuguese" (by Mrs. Browning); for she, it must be remembered, had a well-rounded ideal, and believed that it was your duty to cultivate your mind. Life isn't all parties and beaux, as she sometimes remarked to Mattie Allen....

There came a knock upon the door, breaking the thread of culture. The seneschal Moses entered, announcing callers, ladies, in the drawing-room. Carlisle sighed; recalled herself to actuality. After glancing at the cards, she conceded the injudiciousness of saying that she was out, and told Moses to announce that she would be down in a moment. She kept the callers waiting twenty moments, however, while, in her own room, she made ready for the street. She was donning a hat which in shape and size was not unlike a man's derby; it was of black velvet, lined under the brim with old-blue, and edged with a piping of dark-brown fur. At a certain point in or on it, there stuck up two stiff straight blue plumes. The hat was simply absurd, wildly laughable and ridiculous, up to the moment when she got it on; then it was seen that it had a certain merit after all. It was a calling-costume (as one believes) that Carlisle assumed for the Bellingham; a blue costume, of a soft material which had been invented only about a month before, and which was silk or satin, according as you looked at it, but certainly did not shine much. The coat, or jacket or wrap, which completed the suit was arresting in design, to say no more of it. Less original were the muff and stole of darkest sable; but they were beautiful.

Carlisle, it need hardly be said, went downstairs in her hat. "Oh," the visiting ladies would say, "but you are going out." "Oh, not for half an hour yet," she would protest. "I'm so glad you came."

About 4.30, J. Forsythe Avery, who had no office hours, was ushered into the stately Heth drawing-room. The lady callers withdrew promptly, but not so promptly as to make it too pointed. It was generally believed at this time that Miss Heth "had an understanding" with Mr. Avery, though it was quite well known that she, personally, much preferred young Robert Tellford. The figure, however, at which a famous life insurance company commanded Robert's undivided services made him a purely academic interest. With J. Forsythe the case was totally different: from the environs of his native Mauch Chunk the Avery forbears had dug principal and interest in enormous quantities.

J. Forsythe remained for twenty minutes, the period named when he had telephoned. Having failed to secure any extension of time, he went away, and Carlisle skipped upstairs to look in the mirror, and put on the concluding touches indicated above. Descending and emerging into the winter sunset, she sent the waiting car on ahead to the Byrds', and set out to do the five blocks afoot. Exercise makes pink cheeks.

It was a splendid afternoon, sharp and clear as a silver bell. Carlisle walked well, especially when one considers the sort of shoes she wore: she had the good free stride of one who walks for the joy of it and not because that is the only conceivable way to get somewhere. Nevertheless, just as she reached the Byrd doorstep, she was overhauled by the Cooneys, her poor but long-stepping relatives. There were only two of them this time, Henrietta and Charles, better known, from one end of the town to the other, as Hen and Chas.

The Cooneys, who were young people of about her own age, greeted Carlisle with their customary simple gaiety. Both exclaimed over her striking attire, Charles adding to his sister:

"Let Uncle Dudley stand next to Cally there, Hen—I'm better-looking than you, anyway."

"I'd like to see a vote on that first. Recognize mine, Cally?" cried Hen—"the brown you gave me last fall? First appearance since I steamed and turned it. It'll stand a dye next year, too. But we haven't seen you for a long time, my dear. Did you know Aunt Rose Hopwood's staying with us now?"

"Oh, is she? I hadn't heard, Hen. How is she?"

"She's bad off," said Chas, cheerfully. "Deaf, lame, and cruel poverty's hit her right at her old home address. I guess she'll come live with us later on. Come walk out to King's Bridge for an appetite."

Carlisle, with an impatient foot on the Byrds' bottom step, glanced from Chas to Hen, smiling a little. Her cousins were well-meaning young people, and she liked them in a way, but she often found their breezy assurance somewhat amusing.

"Thank you, Chas," said she, "but I've an engagement with mamma. I'm to pick her up here now. I hope Aunt Molly's well?"

"Fine," said Hen. "Come and see us, Cally. Why don't you come to supper to-morrow night?"

The lovely cousin obviously hesitated.

"Aw, Cally doesn't want to come yell in Aunt Rose Hopwood's trumpet, Hen—"

"Aunt Rose Hopwood's going home to-morrow."

"First I've heard of it. Frankly I doubt your word."

For that Hen idly smote Chas's shins with her silver-handled umbrella (Carlisle's gift three Christmases before), at which Chas cried ouch in such a manner as to attract the attention of bystanders. Henrietta liked this umbrella very much and commonly carried it, like a cane, through all droughts.

"But," said she, reconsidering, "I think Hortense'll be off to-morrow, that's so. Well, come the first soon night you feel like it—"

Carlisle had been doing some considering also, her conscience pricking her on account of the cousinly duty, long overdue.

"I've an engagement to-morrow—so sorry," she said, rather hastily. "But how about one night early next week, say—Thursday, if that would suit—?"

Chas and Hen agreed that it would do perfectly. Pot-luck at seven. Sorry she wouldn't walk on with them. Bully day for Shanks's mares. And so forth....

Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds' vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys' lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's tete-a-tete with Hugo Canning!



VII

How the Great Parti, pursued or pursuing to Cousin Willie Kerr's apartment, begins thundering again.

Bellingham Court was the very newest of those metropolitan-looking apartment hotels which the rapid growth and complicating "standards" of the city was then calling into being. It was on the most fashionable street, Washington, in one of the most fashionable parts of it. And it had bell-boys, onyxine vestibules, and hot and cold water in nearly every room.

It also had a fat black hall-porter in a conductor's uniform, and this functionary informed Mrs. Heth that Mr. Kerr was momentarily detained at the bank, but had telephoned orders that any callers he might have were to be shown right up. The Heth ladies were shown right up.

Willie's new apartment consisted of a sitting-room, a fair-sized bedroom, and a very small bath. About the sitting-room the ladies wandered, glancing disinterestedly at the Kerr Penates. Presently Mrs. Heth opened doors and peeped into what lay beyond.

"It's a good thing he's small," said she. "H'm, that thing looks like a foot-tub."

Carlisle, looking over her mother's shoulder, laughed. "You couldn't splash about much.... You shave at that, I suppose."

"I don't. One shaves. There's a better apartment he could have got for the same price, but manlike he didn't find it out till too late. What's this—bedroom?... Yes, there's the bed."

They stepped back into the sitting-room, and Carlisle, strolling aimlessly about, became a little silent and distrait.

It is possibly true, as crusty single-men affirm, that a certain solacing faculty inheres in beautiful ladies: the faculty, namely, of explaining all apparently unwelcome situations upon theories quite flattering to themselves. But Carlisle surely needed no such make-believe in this moment of rather excited expectancy.

Of course she knew well enough what inferences Evey and Mattie, for instance (in both of whom there was a certain amount of the cat), would have drawn from the fact that Mr. Canning, last month, had not seemed to follow up in anyway their very interesting meeting at the Beach. She alone knew the real circumstances, however, and it had become quite clear to her that Mr. Canning's demeanor was only what was to be expected. He was the proudest of men, and (that awful night at the Beach) she had expelled him from her presence like a schoolboy. Naturally he had been annoyed and offended—stung even into the rudeness of abandoning her in a summer-house to an entire stranger. How could you possibly wonder (unless feline) that he, great unsocial at best, had thereafter remained silent inside his fort?...

"How like a man," breathed Mrs. Heth, glancing at her watch, "to pick out this day of all others to be detained at a bank."

She had sat down in one of the bachelor chairs, to take her weight from her feet, which hurt her by reason of new shoes half a size too small. The sitting-room was pleasant enough in a strictly orthodox fashion, and was illuminated by an electric-lamp on the black centre-table. Mrs. Heth, who had helped Willie with his furnishings, had considered it the prettiest electrolier that fourteen dollars would buy in the town during the week before last. Carlisle had come to a halt before the bookcase. It was a mission-oak case, with leaded glass doors. For the moment it might be said to represent rather the aspirations of a bibliophile than their fulfilment, since it contained but seven books, huddled together on the next-to-the-top shelf. Carlisle swung open the door, and examined the Kerr library title by title: "Ben Hur," "The Little Minister," "Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life" (from his loving Grandma—Xmas 1904), "Droll Tales," "Religio Medici" (Grandma again—Xmas 1907), "The Cynic's Book of Girls"—

Carlisle laughed merrily. "Willie has two copies of 'The Cynic's Book of Girls.'... I'd never thought of him as a divil with the women somehow."

"He could never get Helen Tellford to look at him."

"'Religio Medici.' Is it religious or medical? It might be either, by my Latin."

"One of those faith-healing things, I suppose. Emmanuel Movement. I'd sit down if I were you.... Ah! There's Willie at last. Mind, Carlisle,—don't you hear the steps?"

"Well, we're invited to look at his things—aren't—"

Her careless voice died, as both together became aware that these could not possibly be the steps of a proprietor. The approaching feet halted decorously without, and instead of the door's bursting open there came only a manly knock upon it. Carlisle looked at her mother, and found that her mother was looking at her with quite a tense expression. This certainly was not the way they had wanted things to happen....

"Possibly it's only a tradesman," murmured Mrs. Heth, with hope; and she added in a commanding voice: "Come in."

The door opened, with a certain stately dubiousness. Full on the threshold stood Mr. Hugo Canning, no less: an impressive presence in loose motor-coat of black fur. Mr. Canning stood agaze; it was to be seen that he was taken considerably by surprise.

For the smallest known fraction of a second, the tableau held. Then action began, dashingly.

"Why, Mr. Canning!" cried Mrs. Heth, heartily, rising. "What a very pleasant surprise! So you're back with us again? Delightful!"

Mr. Canning came forward; he bowed with fine civility over the proffered hand, voicing great pleasure in this remeeting. And then his eye went flitting, with a certain interrogativeness, from mother to daughter.

"Such an agreeable coincidence," beamed the good little lady. "Or perhaps this is not your first visit here, like ours? When did you return? Carlisle...."

Carlisle, having forgotten more about the Great Game than her mother would ever know, was far from effusive. Advancing half a step from the bookcase, and offering the tips of white-gloved fingers, she said, smiling perfunctorily:

"How nice to see you. And Willie Kerr, our very delinquent host,—do you bring us news of him?"

"I'm told that he's unluckily detained downtown. But, indeed, it's charming to find you awaiting him too, Miss Heth."

Mrs. Heth sparkled, and declaimed of Willie's remissness. Canning stood in the middle of the floor, hat and stick under his arm, looking without pretences at Carlisle. Under the agreeable indifference of his seemingly amused eye, she felt her color mounting, which only brightened her loveliness. Perhaps it was not quite so easy to maintain the reasoning of beautiful ladies here on the firing-line, as in the maidenly cloister at home.

"Why are men the unreliable sex, Mr. Canning?" said she, laughing. "Here Willie begs us for days to visit him at his rooms—I believe he thinks there's something rather gay and wicked about it, you know, though mamma picked them out for him!—and assures us on his honor as a banker that he is in every afternoon by five at the very latest. So we inconvenience ourselves and come. And now—look!"

"At what, Miss Heth? I trust nothing serious has happened?"

"Ah, but our time is so valuable, you see. We must leave without even saying how-do-you-do. Don't you think so, mamma?"

"So it seems," said Mrs. Heth, and sank into a chair.

Canning smiled.

"Very pleasant little diggings he has here," he observed casually—"my first glimpse of them. I happened to be coming in town on business, and Kerr invited me particularly to drop in to see them, at half after five sharp."

"Really! How very fortunate we are! But, oh, why didn't you come a little earlier and charitably help us through the wait? We've had nothing on earth to do but read and reread 'The Cynic's Book of Girls.'"

"Had I ventured to hope that you were to be here," said he, with a little bow—and was there the slightest, most daring stress upon the pronouns?—"you may be sure I should have arrived long ago."

Carlisle, dauntless, looked full at him and laughed audaciously.

"I recall you now as a maker of the very prettiest speeches. And the worst of it is—I like them!... Mamma," she added, with fine, gay courage, "it is sad to go just as the guests arrive. Yet don't you think, really—"

"I'm afraid we must, my dear. Willie's evidently—"

But the need for tactics was fortunately at an end. If Carlisle had drawn it rather fine, it was yet not too fine. The door flew open, and in bounded Willie. Destiny climbed to the wheel once more.

Willie, though heated with hurry and worry, handled the situation loyally and well, expressing just the right amount of surprise at the coincidental assemblage, in just the right places. Of his detention at the bank (where, as we may infer from his long incumbency, he discharged a tellership to the complete satisfaction of the depositing public), he spoke in bitter detail.

"If you'll excuse the French, ma'am," he summed up, "a man might's well be in hell as ten cents out."

"Why, I do think, Willie," said Mrs. Heth, "that rather than take all that trouble, I should simply have paid the ten cents from my own pocket and said no more about it."

But even Willie, perfect host though he was, did not see his way clear at the moment to explaining the banking system to a lady.

"You might call it sporting pride, ma'am," he said, patiently, and proposed a little tour of the rooms.

The tour, in the nature of the case, was a little one, almost a fireside tour, and soon over. Willie simply did not have the material to spin it out indefinitely. Then refreshments were hospitably insisted on: tea—muffins—something of that sort, you know—and Willie cried down his order through the telephone, which had already been duly admired—one in every room, etc. Next from a hidden cubby he produced siphon-water, glasses, and a black bottle of Scotch. Needed it, said he—digging two hours for ten cents out.

"Like the quarters, hey, Canning? Gad, may move again. Man across the hall—bigger rooms—wants to sublet. Like you to look at 'em sometime, Cousin Isabel. Say, Cousin Isabel, by the bye," he added, expertly putting ice into three glasses, "ran down that chap V. Vivian for you, just now. Fact. Old Sleuth Kerr—catches 'em alive. He's Armistead Beirne's nephew—just turned up here—what d'you think of that?"

"Mr. Beirne's nephew!" echoed Carlisle Heth, without the slightest strategy.

"Vivian? Who on earth, Willie?" demanded Mrs. Heth, puzzled; and looked, not at Willie, but at Carlisle.

"Don't you remember?—chap that wrote that fierce slush attackin' the Works, month or so ago? That's the bird.—Got rye right here, if you prefer it, Canning.—Walked a block with him and old Beirne just now. Remember Amy Beirne—eloped with some inventor fellow—what's his name—oh, sure, Vivian, haha! Lived in Alabama. Here's regards."

Mrs. Heth now recalled the name, and also having asked Willie, long since, to identify it. However, she thought the topic just a little inopportune at the moment.

"Ah, yes. Mr. Beirne's nephew—well! I hope you made this very mild, indeed, Willie? You know I rarely consent to.... He might be better employed, one would think, than vilifying the Works, but there's no accounting for tastes, as I always say."

"Just water with a dash, ma'am. Oh, he's one of these slumming chaps, seems—kind of a Socialist, y' know—"

"The Works?" queried Mr. Canning. "Ah, yes! Mr. Heth's—of course! Is a cigarette permitted?..."

Carlisle, who had been gazing into the fire and acquiring information, roused. "Oh, here's your tea, Willie!" said she. "How very good it looks!"

Unlike mamma, she did not in the least mind Mr. Canning's hearing mention of the Works, even under attack. Shame at trade was not in her: she was confidently proud of the great mute author of her brilliant being. And it was by this pride, dating back many years and untouched by any late personal impression, that no "attack" could gain standing in her mind. At seven, she had one day asked her father, "Papa, what are the Works?"—and papa had smiled and answered, "It's the place where all our money comes from." To this day, her mind's eye called up a great white marble palace, something like the New York Public Library, only bigger, from the front of which, through an enormous cornucopia, poured a ceaseless flood of golden dollars....

"I've no patience with Socialism," said Mrs. Heth, rising. "Where do you want your things put, Willie? Divide all our property up equally with the lazy and drunken classes, to-day, and by to-morrow the hard-working, well-to-do people would have won every bit of it back again. I'm surprised everybody can't see that, aren't you, Mr. Canning?"

"I'm astonished at their blindness," said Canning, gazing at the floor. "Vivian is clearly off his chump at all points."

"That's right—screw loose," said Willie, genially. "Set 'em here, boy. From the feller's literary style, I'd expected a regular riproarin' fire-eater. Gad, no! Face like a child's, kinder cute-lookin'! Fact. Polite as peaches. You pour, Carlisle, will you?"

The folding-table was set. The tea-things were tenderly arranged upon it by the dusky waiter. The little company moved and shifted. Host Kerr surveyed the pleasant scene with no little secret pride of proprietorship. His room—his tea the ripping-looking girl was serving on his patent table—his hireling just backing out of the door.... However, his also was the manifest duty in the premises; and, bestirring himself, he fetched tea and cakes for Mrs. Heth and invited her to sit with him beside the mission-oak bookcase.

Canning had dropped into a chair near the fireplace, one yard from the tea-table. He wore without concealment the air of waiting to be entertained. Carlisle poured, and thought that in ten minutes, or at most fifteen, this would be all over: if the present tete-a-tete was to lead to another, and so on through a gorgeous climacteric sequence, it was now, or it was never. Here was an exciting thought, with stage-fright possibilities to some; but Carlisle, confident through her many testimonials, merely smiled prettily and asked Mr. Canning if he would not take one or more of the cunning little pink cakes. It appeared that Mr. Canning would; pink, he said, was his color.

"I believe we parted rather suddenly," said Carlisle, continuing to smile a little to herself, "the last time I had this pleasure. Do you remember?"

He desired to know if she could possibly conceive his memory to be so short.

"I was immensely mortified," said she, "to learn that I had given you a cold—it was a cold, wasn't it?—or whooping-cough?—by keeping you so long in the night air that evening. I've worried so about it all these weeks. Am I too late to inquire?"

"I kick myself to have gone away leaving you anxious," said Canning, with entire gravity. "The attack, as it chanced, was transitory. There was no coughing—whooping or otherwise. The trouble was purely localized, in the head, and—"

"In the imagination, might one almost say?"

"In the head. You must have heard somewhere of cold in the head? A well-known though unfashionable complaint, throughout the north. I, on the other hand, was much troubled about you, whom I was compelled, by your command, to leave to the mercies of the nocturnal caller. However, Kerr assured me, before I was obliged to go away, that you had come through alive and uninjured."

"Ah, but did I?"... She added, after a brief pause: "Should you call a biting lecture on one's shortcomings from a strange man no injury?"

"But surely, speaking to that topic alone, my supplanter could not have spun it out for two hours, while I, luckless one, tramped alone on the piazza."

"Two hours?... As I say," Carlisle laughed at him, nibbling a little pink cake, "I like your pretty speeches."

The fire crackled merrily. The masculine paraphernalia stood, convenient. Canning stretched out an indolent but man's sized hand and refilled his glass. From across the room Kerr's voice sounded, conveying enthusiasm founded on the solid rock of patience:

"And this little poem about roses and how cold your nose is—I must really show you that, ma'am. Spicy, you know! And the witty picture!"

"I'll compromise on an hour," said Canning. "And what hideous foibles did the visitor charge you with to banish me that long?"

"With being quite heartless."

"Oh."

"With having nothing inside to be kind with. For these reasons he felt quite sorry for me."

"Ah! Is it possible that you could remember my suggesting, just a thought before him—"

"I do remember. But, you see, this man is quite crazy. I suspected it then, but I know it now, for you said so not five minutes ago."

Canning looked at her.

"Your words," said Carlisle, "were that he was off his chump at all points. I hope mamma isn't listening, for she doesn't like me to use slang, and will not believe me when I say the men teach it to me."

"Oh!... Was that Vivian!"

Carlisle nodded. "It makes it all quite interesting, doesn't it? To be felt sorry for by a man who writes really wicked attacks on one's father's perfectly lovely business. Only I knew all along he wasn't really quite right.... I hope you've had a very happy trip?"

"Thank you. I don't believe I have, particularly."

"Oh, I'm sorry!... Have you suffered at all from the blues, since you got well of the cold and escaped at midnight from your little fort?"

Canning continued to look at her.

"I've felt lonely," said he, "when the moon shines bright."

"You?"

A knock fell upon the door, making all look up; and Kerr bustling forward, first opened the door, and then stepped out into the hall. He returned in a moment, his round face puckered dubiously.

"It's Johnson," he explained—"chap across the hall, with the better apartment. Wanted to show it to me now. He's living down the river, and's going off in half an hour. H'm. Well, guess I better let it go till the next time he's in."

"Don't mind us, old chap," said Canning, without hesitation.

"If you wanted mamma to look at it with you, Willie? Perhaps—"

Mrs. Heth was already on her feet.

"Nonsense, Willie! Of course get the man while he's here—and I'm here too! Across the hall?—it won't take us five minutes—"

"All right'm—thank you," agreed Willie, with evident pleasure. He added, smiling roguishly: "You two be trusted five minutes without a chaperon?"

Carlisle laughed dazzlingly.

"Five years, Willie. Mr. Canning is absolutely safe."

Mrs. Heth, saying archly that they would not absent themselves quite so long as that, glided out. Willie followed, engrossed in Johnson. The door was left half open. Johnson was presented. Their voices died away across and down the hall....

A momentary silence fell upon Mr. Canning and Carlisle, thus deserted in the Kerr sitting-room. It appeared to embarrass neither. Having risen, Canning stood at the mantel, sipping his Scotch and looking down at her. Carlisle went on cutting bread and butter, or something of that sort. She felt agreeably excited. In the manner of the shining passer-by she had observed just that progressiveness noted on the occasion of their two other meetings: faintly ironic boredom yielding slowly to passive interest, passive interest warming steadily....

She had taken off her coat, at Kerr's solicitation; she sat with lowered lashes, the glow of the fire upon her cheek. To what measure she engaged and intrigued the eye, Mr. Canning had had seven weeks to forget. No dull wit, we may suppose, in appreciation of feminine masterpieces, he seemed to see it suddenly with some force now, standing and sipping the pleasurable Scotch. And he began to speak in a voice not previously heard in Kerr's apartment.

"Lonely, Miss Heth, when the moon shines bright—blue, too, now that I think of it.—You are good enough to ask if I've had a happy trip. Happy!... Weeks of moping from dull place to duller, months ditto staring one in the face, and for this present—the rural villa of one's estimable cousins, with the sun and the stars for company. Really does it seem such a trifle to you to be plucked up by the ears from one's environment, transplanted bodily league on league, and set down on an empty road four miles from nowhere?"

"Nowhere? You are cruel, Mr. Canning. Four miles travelled in the right direction might bring you to a good deal. Only mountains never really come to Mahomets, not in life."

"Ah, but I'm no Mahomet in these months, alas! to scale mountains or not as the whim strikes me. If I were!... But no, no!—my sentence, you see, is expressly to avoid all mountain-climbing with whatever else is pleasant—to play the invalid, to rest, breathe deep, sleep and coddle. And for excitement—it is my revered mother's own suggestion—why, write a book if I like—my impressions of the New South, or any other reason why! Write a book! What have I to do with writing, think I, of a long morning or a longer night! I'm no scrivening professor, but blood and flesh.... You couldn't imagine the number of times I've been tempted to chuck all the mild climate tomfoolery, and cut away for lights and home!"

Carlisle gazed up at him, her chin upon her ungloved hand. Was there pose in these depictions of Mr. Hugo Canning as a morose recluse? She thought not: his light bitterness rang true enough, the note of a man really half-desperate with ennui. And she read his remarks as a subtle sign of his confidence, an acknowledgment of acquaintance between them, a bond....

"But you can't do it, I suppose?—if your health demands that you put up with us a little while longer?"

"I seem rude?—of course. But my meaning is quite the contrary.... May you, Miss Heth, never know the sorrows of the transplanted and the idle—"

He broke off, staring with apparent absentness.

Much interested, Carlisle said, toying with her teaspoon:

"I didn't think you rude at all. It seems to me perfectly natural that you should be both bored and blue—especially if you don't feel quite well.... But surely a little mild pleasuring during rest hours isn't forbidden as injurious to throats?"

"A little?"

"Of course you think we haven't much to offer, but really there is some amusement to be had here. Really! Perhaps a little gambolling now and then—"

"My curse," said Canning, turning his dark eyes down upon her, "is that I can't learn when to stop. Once I begin, I am never satisfied till I've gambolled all over the place."

Carlisle's eyes fell before his gaze. "This," said she, drawing on a glove, "is a small place."

"You appear to invite me to gambol?"

"I? Oh, no! These are matters that men decide for themselves."

"Possibly the fact is that you invite without desiring to do so."

"Then what," said she, suddenly laughing up at him, "should I have to think of your rudeness in declining my invitation all these days?"

She rose on that, looking about for coat and furs.

"But you must not think of going," said Canning, instantly.

The thundering of his feet grew very audible now.

"The instant mamma comes back. She is staying a long time, isn't she? Do you realize that we've been here hours and hours, and that it looks like midnight outdoors?"

"Still, it would be a satisfaction to finish one conversation with you. We seem to remain all beginnings."

"What end is there to such conversations as this, Mr. Canning?"

"Conversations end in many ways, Miss Heth. I have known them to end like journeys."

The man left the fire, advanced to her side, took the modish wrap from her hands. But he did not at once offer to hold it for her. He stood two feet away from her, and a gleam came into his eyes, faint and a little cold.

"But I wonder," said he, musingly, "if what two men told you in a summer-house one night isn't quite true, after all."

"That I have no heart, you mean?"

"And don't know the meaning of being kind. Easter lilies are pretty on a tomb, but they were never my favorite flowers."

"No," she said, "it is not true. My heart is here"—she touched the place—"it is large—and I am, oh, very, very kind."

"You are rather adorable, you know," said his abrupt voice. "Here is your coat."

She was warm to the eye, animating, of an exquisite figure. Her nearness released a faint fragrance. She slipped her left arm into the sleeve he offered, and looking up at him, half over her shoulder, said with a mocking little laugh:

"And you know that kind-hearted girls are always awfully credulous.... I sweep you off your feet. My eyes intoxicate you, drive you mad! Go on. I've told you that I like your pretty speeches."

"I do not always stop with speeches—you wild, sweet thing...."

So Mr. Canning; and with that speech he did in fact stop most abruptly, and at once turned a step away. In the sharp brief silence, Carlisle put on her other sleeve for herself.

From the hall, almost at the door, it seemed, had sounded the brisk approaching voices of Mrs. Heth and Kerr; presumably also of Johnson. Destiny, having had its way with their absence, was returning them upon the dot. In the sitting-room, talk of such matters as Miss Heth's wild sweetness necessarily came to a sudden conclusion.

The big man lounged with folded arms. His look was slightly annoyed.

"One more beginning, and you have your way again, after all! This becomes a habit," said he, with his faint ironic note. "Miss Heth, I am as you say quite dull and safe: the dullest of all creatures, a play valetudinarian, bored to ill-manners at times, as you have observed, by large overdoses of my own society. Could you take pity on me? Could you and Mrs. Heth give me the pleasure of dining with me, and Kerr, at the Arlington, perhaps,—or wherever else you may prefer,—on the first evening you can spare for deeds of mercy?"

Carlisle looked at him, buttoning her glove. Her lips smiled; but in truth she was a little unsteadied by the exciting moment just passed through, by the buoyant sense of triumph welling up within her. Were not all men, however exalted or difficult, alike her playthings at her pleasure?

"Of course I shall first beg," added Mr. Canning, "to be permitted to pay my respects to you and Mrs. Heth—might I say to-morrow afternoon at five?"

"We shall be so glad to see you, if you care to come," said Carlisle, looking away from him. "As to dining, that would be very nice, of course,—but are you sure your health would—"

"Oh, confound my health!" cried the great hermit. "Promise me now that you will never speak the word in my presence again."

"I promise.... Only really—if my invitation to gambol should lead you to—"

"You are as God made you, Miss Heth. It's not your fault that you invite."

He gave her a look, and, turning, swung wide the door for the chaperon.



VIII

Supper with the Cooneys: Poor Relations, but you must be Nice to them; of Hen Cooney's friend V.V., as she irritatingly calls him; also relating how Cally is asked for her Forgiveness, and can't seem to think what to say.

The Heths' poor relations, the Cooneys, lived in a two-story frame house on Centre Street, four doors from a basement dry-cleaning establishment, and staring full upon the show-window of an artificial-limb manufactory, lately opened for the grisly trade.

The interval between the families of Heth and Cooney was as these facts indicate. If Thornton Heth had married an ambitious woman, and he had, his sister Molly had displayed less acumen. The Cooney stock, unlike the Thompson as it was, deplorably resembled a thousand other stocks then reproducing its kind in this particular city. The War had flattened it out, cut it half through at the roots, and it had never recovered, as economists count recovery, and wouldn't, for a generation or two at the least. Accursed contentment flowed in the young Cooneys' blood. They had abilities enough, but the sane acquisitive gift was not in them. They were poor, but unashamed. They were breezy, keen, adventurous, without fatigue. They claimed the gasoline-cleaning establishment as their private garage, challenging any car under six thousand dollars to beat the expensive smell. A large and very popular group of family jokes centred about the plant of the legman.

Carlisle Heth "came to supper" with the Cooneys, as agreed, on the Thursday following the magic afternoon at Willie's apartment. The week intervening had been, as it chanced, one of the most interesting and titillating periods of her life; by the same token, never had family duty seemed more drearily superfluous. However, this periodic, say quarterly, mark of kinsman's comity was required of her by her father, a clannish man by inheritance, and one who, feeling unable to "do" anything especial for his sister's children, yet shrank from the knocking suspicion of snobbery. In the matter of intermealing, reciprocity was formally observed between the two families. Four times per annum the Cooneys were invited in a body to dine at the House of Heth, Mrs. Heth on these occasions speaking caustically of her consort's relatives, and on Christmas sending gifts of an almost offensively utilitarian nature.

The noisy cousins filled the dingy little parlor to overflowing; this, though Mrs. Cooney and Hen, having rushed out for the welcome, had at once rushed back to the preparations for supper. For it appeared that Hortense was absent once again, having asked to "git to git" a night off, to see her step-daughter allianced to a substitute Pullman porter. The two ladies, however, were only gone before, not lost, and through the portieres joined freely in the conversation, which rattled on incessantly in the Cooney style.

Carlisle sat on the rusty sofa, listening absently to the chatter. Her unaspiring uncle-in-law, the Major, who was vaguely understood to be "in insurance" at present, parted his long coat-tails before the Baltimore heater, and drifted readily to reminiscence. Louise and Theodore (as the family Bible too stiffly knew Looloo and Tee Wee) sat together on a divan, indulging in banter, with some giggling from Looloo—none from grave Theodore. Chas informally skimmed an evening paper in a corner, with comments: though the truth was that precious little ever appeared in any newspaper which was news to the keen young Cooneys....

"And I said to Hen," observed Major Cooney to his fashionable niece, having now got his short history of the world down as far as the '80s—"now stop your whining around me, Miss. If you've got to whine, go down to the cellar and stand in the corner. Well—"

"Why could she whine in the cellar, father? That point isn't clear, sir," said Tee Wee's deep voice.

"Because it was a whine-cellar!" cried Hen, through the portieres.

There was mild laughter at this, rather derisive on the part of all but the Major; but when Chas, glancing up from his paper, remarked crisply: "Aw, Miss Mamie! Like to speak to you a minute, please!"—the merriment seemed mysteriously to acquire a more genuine ring. Carlisle politely inquired who Miss Mamie was.

Looloo, who alone seemed the least bit awed by the presence of her dazzling cousin, undertook to explain.

"She's Mamie Willis, Cally,—I don't believe you know her. Well, you see she's always making the most atrocious puns, and is very proud of them—thinks she's quite a wit. So, you see, when anybody makes an awfully bad pun, like Hen's—"

"Brightest thing I've heard to-night," screamed Hen, defiantly, through the curtains.

"Aw, Loo!" came her mother's soft voice from the unseen. "Run upstairs and get half a dozen napkins, my child. The wash is in the basket on my bed."

"We always pretend like we're repeating it to Miss Mamie, just for fun," concluded Looloo. "Yes'm, mother!"

"Oh! I see," said Carlisle.

She had donned for the coming to supper a plain house-dress of soft dark-green silk, two summers old and practically discarded. ("This old thing, my dear! Why, it positively belongs in the rag-bag!") She never dressed much for the Cooneys. Also, by wholly mechanical processes of adjustment to environment, her manner and air became simpler, somewhat unkeyed: she unconsciously folded away her more shining wings. Nevertheless, there was about her to-night a fleeting kind of radiance which had caught the notice of more than one of her cavalier cousins, notably of pretty little Looloo, who had kissed the visitor shyly (for a Cooney) at greeting, and said, "Oh, Cally! You do look so lovely!" Cally herself was aware of an inner buoyance oddly at variance with the drab Cooney milieu. Recent progress in the great game had more than blotted out all memory of little mishaps at the Beach....

Starting aloft for the napkins, Looloo was adroitly tripped by Tee Wee, and fell back upon him with a little shriek. Instead of checking the tumult that followed, Major Cooney, including Carlisle in the proceedings with a mischievous wink, called out: "Give it to him, Loo! Give it to him!" Loo, having got her small hand in his hair, gave it to him, good-fashion. Tee Wee moaned, and Chas made a fairly successful effort to gag him with the newspaper. In the midst of the uproar, Mrs. Cooney's gentle voice could be heard calling, "Supper, supper," and Hen, entering with a large dinner-bell, conceived the whimsey of ringing it loudly in everybody's ear.

Presently, after much noise and confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest to the younger Cooneys.

"She's nursing a little bunch of violets she got three days ago," Tee Wee explained to Carlisle. "Says she's going to wear 'em to the Masons' to-morrow, though anybody can see they can't possibly live through the night."

"I thought I saw a purple box in the front window as I drove up," said Carlisle. "Is it a secret who sent them?"

"'Bout forty," said Chas, making a fine one-hand catch of a napkin. "You'd hardly call 'em a bunch, Tee Wee—more like a nosegay."

"Pass this coffee to Cally, son."

"Bob Dunn sent 'em, Cally, down at the bookstore," said Looloo, sweetly. "And he wrote Hen a love-letter Thanksgiving beginning, 'Darling Miss Cooney.'"

"That so?" said Tee Wee, who was just home from the University for Christmas and not up on all the news yet. "How'd he sign it—'Your loving Mr. Dunn'?"

"'Ave some werry nice 'am, Cally?"

"Yes—thank you. But do go on and tell me about Mr. Dunn. Does Hen like him?"

"No, but she loves violets," said Tee Wee. "Made me sit up half of last night, fanning 'em for her."

"Loo, pass Charles's plate, daughter."

Carlisle surveyed the noisy table as from some lofty peak. She knew that the Cooney habit of monopolizing all conversation, and dashing straight through every topic, was only their poor-but-proud way of showing off: sometimes it was a little irritating, but to-night only rather fatiguing to the ear-drums. The children came two years apart, as regular as some kind of biannual publication; Looloo, seventeen, being the youngest, and also the best-looking and the most popular in the family. But then all the Cooneys were good-looking, including the Major, and all were popular in the family. In fact, they were more like a house-party than a family at all: and in some ways they rather resembled a queer little secret fraternity, enjoying strange delights and responding with shrieks to unintelligible catchwords.

To-night the talk was more than usually disjointed, owing to the regrettable absence of Hortense. There was constant jumping up, infinite "passing." Mr. Tee Wee, manipulating the water-pitcher from the side-table, complained aside to his mother at the universal thirst. Chas, it seemed, had charge of the heating-up of the later crops of biscuits: he kept springing off to the kitchen, now and then returning with a heaping platter of what he called his little brown beauties.

In the midst of the confusion, Hen strode in, looking somewhat defiant, and instantly drew the fires of all.

"How're the little patients, Hen? Number 9 looked pretty sick to me this—"

"Best thing I know is running 'em up and down the hall, and then brisk massage—"

"Gargled 'em yet, Hen?"

Hen, laughing wildly, stood her ground.

"That's all right!" she retorted to the last sally, which happened to be Chas's. "There are swains in this town who might boost their standing a little if only they'd patronize the florist once in a while!"

This drew loud approbation, and Chas (who was understood to be very attentive to a Miss Leither—Leither!—of the Woman's Exchange), laughing with the majority, threw up his hands, saying, "Hellup! Hellup!"

He fled to the kitchen to look after his little brown beauties. The noisy supper proceeded. Presently Major Cooney, the easy-going and reminiscent, gave the conversation a new tack.

"And where are your violets, Cally, my dear?" he asked, directing one of his mischievous winks at Looloo. "You must have a flower-shop full at home, if what we hear is true."

Carlisle, on the point of saying something slightly caustic about Chas as a swain, found the tables abruptly turned. All the Cooneys were looking at her. She said with equanimity that, on the contrary, she got so few flowers that when she did have any, she sat up at night with them just like Hen.

"And I'll wear 'em to the Masons' to-morrow night, too!" said Hen, throwing round a look which challenged contradiction.

"Now, cousin, what's the use?" said Chas, reentering with his platter. "The Visitor is giving you the rush of your young life, and we're all on. Take a handful of my beauties."

"You mean Mr. Canning? My dear Chas, if he only were!"

There was no rebuffing the Cooneys. They began their little third-degree system.

"He called on you last Thursday afternoon, didn't he, Cally?" said Looloo, laughing, with a little face for her daring.