inged by drink. Every
one said so. He had broken his father's heart with--"

"But he did this because of me. Because of what I let everybody think of
him.... Mamma, I--I must go back home. I'm sorry to upset
everything so...."

The maid stood by with her tray and glass, but no hand reached for the
offering.

"Back to the hotel? Of course!--you are ill, my poor dear! You need
rest...."

"I mean back home. You see I can't be here now ... when this has
happened. I must go now, to-night. I remember the train goes at
nine-fifty-five."

Mrs. Heth, wheeling upon the maid with livid perturbation, cried:

"Get my wraps."

XX

In which Jack Dalhousie wears a New Dignity, and the Lame
Stranger comes to the House of Heth.

Dalhousie had been worthless while he lived. Now he had achieved the
last supreme importance. The inconsiderable of yesterday wore a mute and
mighty power. So he reached over the spaces, and broke the brilliant
dinner-party at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs. So Mrs. Heth and Carlisle
Heth disputed, by this new great dignity that was his, and talked in the
hotel bedroom, and hurriedly changed evening attire for travelling
suits. And so Hugo Canning, abruptly widowed at a railway station, was
left to toss wakefully that night, ridden by deepening anxieties....

For Cally had carried her extraordinary point; now that Jack Dalhousie
was henceforward indifferent to all these matters.

She had said, with the deadly flatness of the mood which her mother so
dreaded, that she wanted to go home to-night, and there had been no
reasoning with her. Go home for what? Mrs. Heth had asked it twenty
times, battling desperately against the menacing madness, now with
argument and threat, now with tears and wheedlings. And Cally,
proceeding dry-eyed with her dressing and bag-packing, had proved unable
to produce a single solid reason.

Still, it became clear that lock and key would not keep her. The options
ensuing were whether her mother should go with her, or Hugo should go,
or Cally be allowed to go alone. Small choice here, indeed.

Of that evening the events following the hurried departure from the
Ambassadeurs were always blurred in Carlisle's memory. To Mrs. Heth each
detail remained crystal-clear as long as she lived. Upon her shoulders,
as usual, fell the burden of managing everything so that the least harm
should befall. Defeated, and consequently hatted and cloaked, she
emerged from the