's the weather," suggested Mr. Heth, who wore a white flannel
suit and fanned himself with a dried palm-leaf. "And I reckon, too,
she's feeling sorry to leave her old father for such a long time. Four
months--hio!"

"Cally's not the girl to get black rings under her eyes for things like
that."

She added presently: "It's a pure love-match, which is naturally a
gratification to me, who brought the whole thing about. 'Thank God,
Cally, you've got a mother,' I said to her only the other day. But I do
say there's such a thing as carrying love just a little too far."

Cally, meantime, while affecting no interest in summer clothes for
chairs, kept as closely occupied with her own affairs, social activities
and preparations for the brilliant absence, as mamma did with hers. Much
time went, too, to her correspondence with Canning, who wrote her daily
fat delightful letters, all breathing ardent anticipation of her
approaching visit in his own city. And back to Canning, she wrote even
fatter letters every morning in mamma's sitting-room, dear letters (he
thought them) in which she told him every single thing except what she
was really thinking about....

And why shouldn't she tell Hugo that also? Once or twice she really came
very near doing it. For as her mind had become released from her first
acute apprehensions, it had seemed to insist on turning inward a little;
and there grew within her a sense of unhappiness, of loneliness, a
feeling of her poor little self against the world. She longed for some
one to explain it all to, to justify herself before; and who more
appropriate in this connection than her lover? That Hugo might have been
shocked, and perhaps disgusted, to have the misunderstanding discovered
to him by way of the Dalhousies' megaphone was, indeed, likely; but to
have her quietly tell it to him, as it really happened, with the proper
stress on circumstances and gossip, would be quite another matter. She
felt almost certain that he would agree with her; it once that it would
be a great mistake to rake up all this now, when it had all blown over
and Dalhousie was doing so splendidly down in Texas....

However, Cally procrastinated. And then, Sunday morning in church, as
she sat pensively wishing for a confidant, it came upon her somewhat
startlingly that she already had one: Dr. Vivian was her confidant. Did
he not know more about her than anybody else in the world?...

The simple thought seemed to cure her i