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,