Chapter XXIV

How the Best People came to the Old Hotel again; how Cally
is Ornamental, maybe, but hardly a Useful Person; how she
encounters Three Surprises from Three Various Men, all
disagreeable but the Last.

To the Dabney House, it was like old times come back. Not in forty years had the ancient hostelry so resounded with the steps of the best people. Without, there stood lines of motor-cars in the shabby and unaccustomed street, ten times as many as there had been in May. Within--to prove at a stroke the tone of the gathering--J. Forsythe Avery himself stood conspicuously at the very door: not merely stood, but labored behind a deal table for the cause, distributing Settlement pamphlets, brochures or treatises, to all comers. He irresistibly reminded Carlisle of one of those lordly men in gold-lace outside a painless dentist's parlors. Many others of the conquering order there were observed also, almost in the first glance; chiefly congregating in the new assembly room, where the "opening reception" was under way, but also deploying in numbers all over the lower floor and the remodeled basement beneath.

It was the Heths' first public appearance since their home-coming, and perhaps even mamma felt a little bit self-conscious. But Carlisle had come with serious intentions, and a manner of determined vivacity. Let people find anything to gloat over in her appearance, if they could. Glancing about as they left Mr. Avery, she saw that the old court or lobby, where she had stood and talked once on a rainy May day, had been left intact, only renovated somewhat as to floor and walls. On one side of it now ran down a row of offices with new glass doors, the first of them, marked "Mr. Pond." On the other side, a great arched doorway led into the large meeting-room, formed by the demolition of many partitions. Changed indeed it all was: yet Cally found it quite disturbingly familiar too....

Beyond the arched doorway stood a little group of the best men and women: a reception committee clearly, and Mrs. Heth had not been asked to serve upon it, as she was instantly and indignantly conscious. However, she was one to bear martyrdom nobly, knowing that truth would prevail in the end; and accordingly she greeted Byrds, Daynes, and others with marked and lingering cordiality. Carlisle, passing down the receiving line more quickly, soon found herself introduced to Pond, the imported Director, according to her plan. The phrase is accurate, for Mr. Pond appeared to be panjandrum here, and people of all degree were presented to him, as to royalty. Frequent hearing of the man's name in the last few days had suggested nothing to Carlisle, but the moment she caught sight of his keen face with the powerful blue-tinged jaw, she recalled that she had seen Mr. Pond in the Dabney House before now.

The Director had turned with businesslike indifference as Mr. Dayne spoke her name, but his expression as he looked at her took on a sudden half-surprised intentness which Carlisle had seen upon the faces of strangers before now. His reply to her commonplaces of greeting was:

"Where have I met you before?"

"Nowhere, I think."

Bored with the tenor of his speech, she looked at him steadily yet negligently for a moment; and then, releasing her gaze, continued: "This is the assembly room, isn't it? What sort of meetings are to held here?"

A faintly quizzical look came into the man's incisive stare. "Do you really think it worth while for me to explain, when--"

He left this beginning hanging in midair, while he turned, without apology, to accept the humble duties of three new arrivals. Cally waited patiently. Mrs. Berkeley Page had left her possessed of an impulse, which she took to be almost tantamount to a resolution. She would give at least part of her time to doing something solid....

Director Pond, turning back to her, concluded:

"When we are both well aware that you don't care a continental what sort of meetings are going to be held here?"

"Oh, but I do, you see," replied Cally, distinctly irritated. "I'm very much interested. One of the reasons I'm here this afternoon," she explained, not without an under-feeling of sad nobility, "is that I am thinking of offering myself as--as a worker."

"Oh!--As a worker."

"Yes."

"A worker. You mean it?"

She said, glancing indifferently away: "But probably Mr. Dayne is the person I should speak to about it.... Or--perhaps Dr. Vivian...."

"What's Dayne or Vivian got to do with it? Walk a little away from the door with me--there! Thank the Lord when this mob clears out.... So you want to offer as a worker," said Director Pond, his face gravely authoritative. "Good. We need workers more than money now, which is putting it somewhat strongly. I am pleased that you will join us. When can you move in?"

"Move in?"

"You understand, of course, that resident workers are the only ones good for anything. You will want to live here, for a year or so at least. Naturally the sooner you can come the better."

"Live here? Here in the Dabney House? Well, no," said Carlisle, with open amusement, "I could hardly do that."

"Ah?" said he, without the slightest change of expression. "Well, that's a pity.... Allow me to raise my hand and point at this wall, so; and now people will understand that I'm explaining important points to a worker, and will not interrupt. Of course there is something for the non-residents to do, too. Let us see now. You can sew, I suppose?"

"Sew?... Well--not really well at all."

"Too bad," said he, keeping his broad back to the lively groups about them and pointing steadily at the wall. "However--I'm thinking of putting in a woman's infirmary. Can you recommend yourself as reasonably fitted for an assistant amateur nurse?"

"Oh, no! No, I couldn't do that, I'm afraid. I can't bear sickness."

"Indeed? A great many people enjoy it.... Well!--district visitor it is, then, while we're getting acquainted with the neighborhood. But it means business, you know--six days a week visiting in the homes of the poorest, dirtiest and meanest, investigating, collecting facts under instructions you will get from me--"

"Oh! Well, no--not that. I--I'm afraid my mother wouldn't care to have me do that."

The man's pointing hand, which was large and strong-looking, fell at his side, and he gazed at her with a sarcasm which he no longer troubled to conceal.

"May I ask what under the sun you can do?"

"What I can do?..."

Under his hard and frankly belittling stare, Carlisle began to feel rather small, despite her firm resolves to feel nothing of the sort. She had heard something of this Mr. Pond in the past week: a person of some consequence in the world, it was said, several kinds of Doctor, and the author of a work on The Settlement which was considered "standard" and which Cally had meant (since last night) to purchase at Saltman's bookstore. Report made him also a man of some independent means and position, and certainly he had come with excellent letters and credentials. But Cally did not consider that these things justified anybody in being so thoroughly hateful, particularly when you could see that it was only an eccentric pose....

"That," said she, with dignity, "is what I am now considering--"

"But you've already offered to help! I merely request you, in a polite manner, to state how you can help me, in my big, serious and important work.... Doesn't it occur to you, in fact, that you are somewhat helpless?"

"Does it occur to you that you are being somewhat rude?"

"Does it occur to _you_ that what you call rudeness may be exactly the sort of wholesome irritant needed by people of your class?"

"What do you mean by people of my class?"

Cally raised a white-gloved hand and put back a tendril of her gay hair. She looked at him level-eyed. The man's constant and cocksure "I," "me," "mine," rubbed her strongly the wrong way. This was Dr. Vivian's Settlement, and nobody else's. She was convinced that Vivian would have made a far better Director anyway....

Mr. Pond, however, smiled suddenly. The smile largely transformed his dark face, making it look for the first time quite agreeable, and even kind.

"I mean," said he, "those who are highly ornamental, but cannot candidly be described as generally useful."

The reply, for some reason, silenced her. She thought of Mrs. Page. The man's smile faded.

"Not," said he, "that I don't consider ornaments of use. I do, in their place. Now I must get back to the firing-line. I can only add that if you are serious about wanting to help me, Miss--I'm afraid I didn't catch your name--you will lose no time in qualifying yourself to be of service. Obviously you are not so qualified at present."

He nodded curtly, and turned away. The admiring populace swallowed him up....

Cally felt as if she had received a severe drubbing. She felt rebuffed, defeated, depressed, and at the same time vaguely stimulated. However, the moment for introspective analysis was not now....

"Well, Cally," said motherly Mrs. McVey, drifting by, "you must feel sort of lonesome--such a turn-out of old folks I never saw. I wanted Evey to come, but she said she 'd as soon go to a tea at the Needy Ladies' Home."

On the heels of Evey's mother came Cally's own, whose watchful eye had been felt from a distance before now. Possibly mamma had not forgotten what happened the last time Cally came to the Dabney House....

"I saw you talking with Mr. Pond," said Mrs. Heth, a little aside. "How did he impress you?"

"He's the most conceited human being I ever saw," said Cally. "I believe he said one or two fairly interesting things."

"Well--that's not a bad recommendation. I like an important man to think well of himself. I'll ask him for my Settlement dinner Saturday, when those Cheritons stop nagging at him."

Mamma looked slightly flushed beneath her fixed smile; a look which her daughter had no difficulty in understanding. More than once this afternoon, Cally had encountered significant stares upon herself, instantly removed, which showed with amusing candour that she was the subject of conversation in those quarters. No more could she assume that this conversation and those stares were but the involuntary offerings of the multitude to beauty and brilliant success. And yet she did not seem to mind so very much....

"I just gave my Settlement check to Mr. Byrd," added mamma. "He was very grateful, but not as grateful as he ought to have been."

She glided back to her position near the door. Mrs. McVey, chatting on, observed that the Pond man hadn't seemed impatient to make her acquaintance, though she had waited round some time to give him the pleasure; also that there were no refreshments but ice-water from the new ten-gallon cooler in the hall. Then she, in her turn, passed on, as J. Forsythe Avery was discerned steering in a fixed direction through the crowd.

"Are your labors ended so soon?"

Mr. Avery bowed pluperfectly, and Cally smiled suddenly. He was a pink, slightly bald young man, and had once been described by Mr. Berkeley Page as very gentlemanly.

"What are you laughing at?" inquired he, somewhat lugubriously.

"Only at something funny Mrs. McVey just said. You know how witty she is.... Have you handed them all out?"

"I appointed a deputy," confessed Mr. Avery, "but I labored hard for a time. Am I not entitled to--er--the rewards of labor now?"

Cally glanced away, with no more desire to smile. The look in his pink eyes had arrested her attention, and she wondered whether she could possibly bring herself to take him. She was not wanted as a Settlement worker; and he would be colossally wealthy some day. Perhaps he lacked an indefinable something that comes from grandfathers, but he had never committed a social fault in his life, unless you would hold up against him an incurable fondness for just one tiny little drop of cologne on a pure linen handkerchief. Mamma would be rather pleased, poor dear.

Then her mind's eye gave her a flashing memory-picture of Canning, the matchless, and Mr. Avery became unimaginable....

"Such as what?" said she, listlessly, to his roguish hints of reward.

"I should offer my escortage for--er--a small tour over the premises, and so forth. Why not?"

"No reason in the world, except that I may not go over the prem ..."

That word the speaker left forever unfinished. And her next remark was:

"What did you say?"

Obviously there was an interlude here; and in it Cally Heth had seen, and recovered from the sudden sight of, the strange young man Mr. V.V., upon whom her eyes had not fallen since a sunny May morning when she had sat and wept before him. He stood quite near, the founder of the Settlement, though in an obscure corner: backed there, it seemed, by a fat conversationalist in a purple bonnet. But there must have been telepathy in Cally's gaze for her one confidant; for she had no sooner descried his tall figure through the fuss and feathers than he turned his eyes and looked at her.

She had considered with mingled feelings the prospect of meeting this man again to-day; and now the sight of his face and lucid gaze brought something of that sense of shock which had attended these encounters in other days. Only now, twined with the painfulness of many associations which his look aroused, there was a sort of welcome, odd and unexpected; she felt a little start of gladness, as at the unlooked-for appearance of something trusted and familiar. How was it that she had thought so little of him in these months, through which it had seemed that there was nobody who understood?...

She bowed, in quite a bright and friendly way, putting down her inward disquiet; and then it was that, turning hastily again to the faithful Avery, Cally inquired:

"What did you say?"

"I suggested," said the pink and pluperfect one, "that you ought to see the gymnasium and swimming-pool at any rate. I'm informed that the pool is the largest in the State, and ..."

But Cally had seen that the man from another world was stepping out from his obscurity; and now there sounded above the Avery periods the vivid voice first heard in the summer-house.

"Miss Heth!--may I say how-do-you-do?... I hadn't seen you till that moment. In fact, I had no idea you were here ..."

"Oh, yes, indeed. I'm a Life Member, if you please," said Cally turning, looking again at the owner of that voice. "How do you do? Do you know Mr. Avery, Dr. Vivian?"

The two men bowed. Young Mr. V.V. had not long retained the slim hand which--such was his lot--had been offered to him for the first time in his life.

"Oh, Miss Kemper!" added Cally. "Do forgive me--I didn't recognize your back at all. May I introduce Mr. Avery?..."

And then, while Mr. Avery paid reluctant devoirs to the lady in the purple bonnet, Cally said quite easily to Dr. Vivian:

"I was just debating whether or not to make an exploring expedition over the whole Settlement. Is there much to see?--or is it mostly rooms?"

"Oh, mostly rooms," said Mr. V.V.

He seemed to begin a smile at this point, and then to change his mind about it. The smile, if such it was, ended short, as if clipped off.

"This door," he added turning to the fresh-painted portal at his elbow, "leads to one of them.... A fair sample, I imagine. This one happens to be a--ah--a sort of sewing-class room, I believe...."

"Oh, a sewing-class room! That must be where I was offered a position."

"Will you look at it?"

"I'd like to. Only I can't sew a bit, you see...."

She stepped exploringly through the open door, into the sort of sewing-class room. V. Vivian walked after her; and behind him he distinctly heard the surprised and somewhat offended voice of the Kemper:

"Funny! I thought that was Mr. Pond I was talking to all the time."

"It's--it's a very nice place," said Cally, glancing about her as she advanced.

Not that it mattered, but it really was not a particularly nice place, only a rather dark and small chamber, smelling of paint and entirely empty save for one bench.

"Not a great deal to see, as you notice," said the summer-house voice behind her, sounding somehow changed since last year.... "Not much of a class could sit on the bench, I fear. Or perhaps it's this next room that's for sewing."

"Oh, I don't mind," said Cally.

And then she turned suddenly upon Mr. V.V., facing him, looking up with a sweet, half-wistful smile such as her face had never worn before for him.

"But tell me something about yourself.... What sort of summer have you had?"

So he was brought to a halt, confronting in one of his donated rooms the loveliest of the Huns; confronting, but not looking at her exactly....

"Well, it's been hot, as you know--in fact, the hottest summer since the Weather Bureau began. That wasn't comfortable, of course. There was a good deal of suffering, where people couldn't afford ice.... Personally, I've happened to be so busy that the weather didn't matter--"

"That's quite ominous, isn't it, in a doctor? Has there been so much sickness in this neighborhood?"

"Yes, there's been a lot of it. We had rather a bad typhoid epidemic, beginning in July--not easy to check in this old district, standing pretty much as it was before the war. I sometimes think there's no hope of ever cleaning it out, short of a London fire.... I--I hope you've been well?"

"Oh, yes, quite well, thank you. But is this district so bad--from a health point of view?"

"You should see it," said he, rather drily. "Or rather, of course, you shouldn't. It's more or less disturbing to one's peace of mind at times...."

She was looking at him with an interested intentness of which she was quite unconscious. Never before had she seen this man free of the knowledge of menacing discussion ever pressing in the foreground; so now it was a little as if she met for the first time some one whom she had heard a great deal about from others. Her eye for externals had observed his new suit at once; in this deceptive light she considered that it looked quite nice, not suspecting that it was only the Prince, reduced; and she was thinking, with a sense of discovery, that Mr. V.V. was undoubtedly a good-looking man. A certain change in his manner she had also noted; a new touch of force, it seemed, a somewhat stiffened masculinity. What had become of that rather engaging hopeful look of his, which was the second thing she had ever noticed about him?...

"Perhaps I shall see it some day," she answered. "If I ever become one of your Mr. Pond's district visitors and investigators."

"Are you thinking of doing that?"

"Oh, I offered to try to do something, but Mr. Pond declined me, without thanks. He said I was perfectly useless to him--in his big and serious work. The worst of it was," she said, smiling rather ruefully, "he proved it."

She was glancing toward the door, with the moving and humming groups beyond, and so missed the sudden eagerness that briefly lit his face.

"What part of the work--if I might ask--were you--specially interested in?"

"I suppose I'm not really interested in any part. That must be the trouble. Probably it's just the usual dissatisfied feeling--when one is a little tired of parties...."

Was that not yet another confidence, clearly calling for an understanding listener, for sympathetic reassurance? Nothing of the sort came to Cally; nothing of any sort. The brief pause, sharpened as it was by Mr. V.V.'s oddly formal bearing, was rather like a cold douche. And now it seemed that she must have been counting on this man somehow all along, though it was not clear as to what....

"So you see my peace of mind is quite safe. Mr. Pond is right, of course...." And then, thinking that this cool distance was rather absurd under the circumstances, she added in a friendlier way: "But why aren't you the Director here, instead of Mr. Pond? I should think you would be, since it's your Settlement."

But the result of that was only to bring new stiffness into the strange young man's manner.

"My Settlement!... Oh, I beg that you won't speak or think of it in that way. I assure you I've nothing at all to do with it, other than as one worker out of many."

Her unwarlike reply was: "Well, I haven't told anybody."

She glanced at him with a touch of bewilderment, and glanced away again, turning toward the door. Surely he had not always been like this....

"Mr. Avery will think I'm lost," said Cally.

However, Mr. V.V. successfully checked her departure, saying:

"I'm sure you can be of the realest help to the Settlement, Miss Heth, if you care to be." And, then, veering abruptly, he said with his air of making a plunge: "But I must take this opportunity to speak to you of another matter. A matter which, I fear, will be disagreeable to you."

That sufficiently arrested her; she stood looking at him, with a conflict of sensations within. Faces of Settlementers appeared in the door, looked in at the bare room, passed from view again. The tall young man in the new suit pushed back his hair, with the quaint gesture he had.

"You once said," he continued, in a voice of light hardness, "that I brought you nothing but trouble. That seems to continue true, though perhaps you won't regard this as so--so serious...."

Trouble? More trouble for Cally Heth?

"Why--what do you mean?"

"The question of the Heth Works--has come up again. That, at least, is the particular application. Of course many other factories are involved."

The girl was completely taken aback. "Why, I don't understand. What has come up?"

He then explained himself, in well-ordered sentences:

"The State Labor Commission feels strongly that the public good demands a new factory law at this time, requiring all owners to conform to a certain higher standard of comfort and safety for their employees. I must add that I fully share the Commission's feeling. It is considered that some publicity in the press is needed, preparing the public mind for a progressive law by showing what present conditions are. A series of articles has been decided upon, to begin about the first of November and continue daily till the legislature meets in January. I have agreed to write these articles. I thought it only fair," he ended short, "to tell you this."

The girl heard him with startled astonishment. She had never, of course, been interested in her father's factory other than as a family symbol; and that factitious interest which she had felt at times last year, born of this man's hostility, was gone long since, effaced by a tide of stronger feelings. So his sudden exhumation of the topic as a cause of war now came upon her with the harshest discordance. It seemed almost like a wanton wounding of her, somehow like sheer disloyalty in him. Surely if there were need of articles, this man might leave them to somebody else to write....

Her young gaze was full of an unconscious reproachfulness.

"All that means that you are going to put some more letters in the paper attacking my father?"

"I'm afraid it's inevitable it will seem so to you."

"Oh,"' said she, it seemed involuntarily, "I don't see how you _can_!"

The young man Mr. V.V. made no reply. It may be that he didn't see how he could either....

He looked away from the reproachful eyes, slate-blue to match the plumes in the hat: and there were phrases from his articles singing and kicking in his head, phrases which would cry in the penny newspaper as no voice could cry from the wilderness. Ten thousand words he had ready now, in the old secretary upstairs; hard words all, that broke heads or hearts, faiths implied too, it might be, and did not care; or didn't mean to show it if they did. And he thought, too, of a little friend he had, just pulled back from death's door, and hardly ready for her Trip now, after ten weeks. So of course there could be no flinching now....

Through the door there came the continuous sounds of the nearness of the multitude, but these two seemed almost as alone in his old hotel as they had been on another afternoon long ago.

"Don't you think," said the pretty voice, still not angry--and surely anger would have been easier to meet than this--"that before doing anything so--so radical as that, you might wait a little while, believing that my father would--do what is right?"

The lame doctor brought his eyes back to her and said, slowly: "You see, I've been worried by the feeling--that I've waited too long already."

"Too long for what? That's just what I mean. What do you think could possibly happen?"

"For one thing, Miss Heth," he said, with a faint dry smile, "the building might fall down some day."

Color came into Cally's cheek. Her feeling now was that she had made advances, spontaneous and friendly, and been smartly rebuffed. What cared he for the troubles of the Heths?...

"You really think my father would risk the lives of his employees, just to make a little more money for himself?"

He answered, almost brusquely: "I don't mean to judge your father. People take their views of life from the atmosphere in which they live. You appreciate that. I, of course, concede your father's point of view. I fully understand it. I--wish it were possible for you to do as much for mine."

She looked at him fixedly a moment, said, "I'm sorry you think this necessary," and turned away to the door. But once again his voice arrested her.

"Miss Heth!... You feel an interest in the Settlement. You've felt a wish to help in the work--to lend a hand in some way to those less fortunate than yourself. You--you haven't as yet decided just what you want to do...."

She had paused at the door, half-turning; their eyes met once more. And now the whole look of the strange young man seemed to change, and he said with sudden gentleness:

"Why don't you go to the Works some day?"

But it was late in the day to seek to improve matters with looks and tones, with efforts to put responsibilities upon her. Cally answered as she had answered him once before: only it was a mark of some change in her--toward him, perhaps toward life itself--that she spoke with a dignity which had never been hers last year.

"I don't think I need do that to learn that my father isn't a homicide."

* * * * *

For the second time also, Cally went away from the Dabney House without the company of her staunch little mother: who would remain in this place till among the last, contending among the best people for the thing she held dearest in the world.

Cally, however, was well looked after by Mr. Avery, who welcomed her upon the threshold of the sewing-class room (if that is what it was), removing himself firmly from the Kemper. His proposal was to continue the tour of the premises, but she replied that she found Settlementing dreadfully boring, and was of a mind to steal away for home. The disappointed pink one then proposed to accompany her, and pay a little call, as he put it. However, she professed an incurable dulness after her slumming, and countered with an offer to set him down at his club, if he liked.

It was so arranged, with the gallant, and also with mamma. William Banks, detached by a nod from the procession of waiting vehicles over the dingy street, wheeled up to the entrance; halted with a whir; electrically self-started himself once more. Carlisle bowled off with J. Forsythe Avery, who was well pleased with this token of her regard, and resolved to make the most of it. But soon the time came when he was debarked from her conveyance; she was rid of his ponderous ardors; and Cally rolled through the twilight streets alone....

There had settled down upon her a deep and singular depression. Her spirit ached, as if from a whipping. She thought a little of the Works; she had remembered that moment of somewhat painful revelation last year; but no reflection brought any doubt of her father. Long since she had reached the sound conclusion that that was the way business was; and if this fixed belief had been shaken a little now, she was hardly conscious of it. Papa, of course, did all that was reasonable and right for his work-people; it was perfectly outrageous that he should be subjected to abuse in the newspapers. Dr. Vivian, for his part, was conceded a religious fellow's strange sense of duty, though it required an effort to concede him that. Still Cally was not thinking of it from these points of view exactly. It all seemed to be quite personal, somehow....

She gazed through the car-window at the familiar panorama, streets, houses, and people which she now did not see. It had been, indeed, an afternoon of snubs, such as she was hardly accustomed to receiving; and she seemed to have lost something of that wholesome defensive power she had possessed last year, the power of being righteously indignant. Time's whirligig had brought her to this,--that she had all but offered her friendship to Jack Dalhousie's friend, and he had more than repulsed her. She did feel indignant, a little; but, deeper than that, she felt wounded, she hardly knew why. After that moment of barrier-less intimacy in the drawing-room, how could he bear to be so hard?

Her vesper thoughts veered a little, moved from Vivian to Director Pond, who had also brusquely rebuffed her. It was Mrs. Page's experience that Cally had had this afternoon, and she too found it humiliating. She had lately caught a distant glimpse of "work" in terms different from those which the dull word had worn heretofore: vaguely discerned activities in which the best women were coöperating usefully with men--coöperating equally as human beings, and no nonsense; not as women at all. There was something mysteriously inviting in this. She had felt a bracing absence of sex in Pond's hectoring catechism and blunt rejection of her. Yes, and in the cool declaration of war from Dr. Vivian, who had grown so hard since May. Busy and serious beings these, who would not be deterred by the flutterings of the doubtless ornamental but completely useless....

"You're to go back for Mrs. Heth, William."

"Yas'm," said William, and clicked the little door behind her.

Yes, and where there was no sex, there she, Cally Heth, wasn't wanted. Hard words these, but they seemed to have the ring of truth. She was wanted as a woman, she was wanted as an ornament, but she appeared to have no particular purpose as a human being. And the best prospect that life held out to her to-night was to settle down in a weary world as Mrs. J. Forsythe Avery.

Cally opened the front door, which was hospitably kept on the latch during the daytime, and stepped into the dim hall of home. Rarely in her life had she felt more dispirited. Nevertheless, when she heard a footfall from the direction of the drawing-room, and was reminded that papa had already come in, her combative blood plucked up at once. She wanted to tell her father immediately that he was going to be attacked in the papers; never fear but he would know what to do about it.

"Papa!" she called. "Where are you? I ..."

Speaking, she had put her head through the drawing-room portières, rehung that very day: and so it was that her sentence was never ended in this world. For it was not papa who turned so quickly at the sound of her voice, and came walking so straight and sure towards her. Not papa, this splendid and once well-admired figure, now confronting her with such unmistakable feeling. No, the wonder of all wonders had happened; and the universe seemed to hang in momentary suspense as Cally Heth looked again into the eyes of her prince of lovers.

"Carlisle," said Hugo's remembered voice, "I've come back."

She stood unmoving in the doorway, her fingers tightening on the silken hanging. Her breast was in a tumult of emotions, in which a leaping exultation was not wanting. But stronger than anything else in this moment was the uprushing feeling that here was one whom she had well trusted once, and who had failed her in her direst need.

"So I see," said she.

And continuing to look fixedly at him as he advanced upon her, beginning to speak, she was shot through with a bitter thought:

"He's found I'm not so badly damaged after all."