take the
discovery of a little misunderstanding now with a charming quiet
courtesy?--that, shouting the discovery abroad to save their faces, they
would have due regard for careful qualifications and for striking the
right note? The reply was the negative: it was not at all likely.

Cally knew the world's rough judgments, where all is black or all is
white, and ifs and buts go overboard as spoiling the strong color
scheme. And well she knew the way of horrid gossip; none better. That
she, Carlisle Heth, had deliberately lied merely to save her name from
public association with young Dalhousie's, and by this lie had ruined a
boy who in his way had loved her well: such would be the story which the
angry Colonel (perhaps coming to shoot papa besides) would throw to the
four winds, to be rolled in the mouth of gossip forevermore. O what a
tasty morsel was here, my countrymen!...

Staring fearfully into the dusk, Carlisle pictured herself as hearing
such a story about Evey or Mattie: she perceived at once, with sickening
sensations, how intensely she would be interested in it. Yes; once
started, it would sweep through drawing-rooms and clubs like fire. With
what glee would the world's coarse tongue make its reprisals upon
brilliant success! Town-talk the lovely Miss Heth would be, spotted all
over with that horrid tattle from which she (and Hugo) had ever so
shuddered and shrunk....

And against this threatened avalanche, entailing who knew what
consequences, she had but the frail shield of the sense of honor--well,
then, say, the sense of chivalry--of a man far beneath her world, whom
she had frequently told herself that she disliked and despised.

A pale yellow ray of the moon, journeying upward over the coverlet, fell
across her face. She rose, pattered on slim bare feet over the chequered
floor, lowered the shade. Inside and out, all the world was still. Cally
dropped down on her chaise-longue by the window, very wide awake....
And, gradually, since she was practical, she formed a plan of action: a
plan so simple that she wondered she had not thought of it at once....

A long time she had spent in trying to think how she might compel,
cajole, or bribe the man at the Dabney House to pledge her his eternal
silence. But she had not been able to think of any promising way: each
time, she brought up confronting with painful fascination the conviction
that religious fellows were hard. And out of this conviction there grew,