d mout anybody be sick. Answered vaguely on this
point, he announced that he had breakfast ready-waiting on the table;
this, though Mr. Canning's telegraph never retched him till nea'bout
eight o'clock. His tone indicated a pride of accomplishment not, he
hoped, unjustified.

Having removed the more superficial stains of travel, the two women sat
at table in the half-dismantled dining-room. It was a meal not easily to
be forgotten, made the more fantastic by Mrs. Heth's determined attempts
to act as if nothing in particular had happened. From her remarks to the
ancient family retainer it appeared that she and Miss Carlisle had
returned home to attend to a business matter of no great consequence,
overlooked in the rush of departure. And she demanded, quite as if that
were the very business referred to, whether the plumber had come to stop
the drip in the white-room bathroom.

The butler's reply took a not unfamiliar direction. The plumber, and
his helper, had come and 'xperimented round: but they had not yet
stopped the drip....

Mrs. Heth ate heartily, with a desperate matter-of-factness. It was
half-past nine o'clock. Nothing had happened yet, at any rate. Beside
her, Carlisle had more difficulty with her breakfast, hampered by her
continuing mind's-eye picture of Jack Dalhousie, lying on his back on a
floor somewhere. Might it be that, as this horror made telling so much
harder, it also altered the whole necessity? There were plenty of
arguments of mamma's to that effect....

"Mr. Heth got off all right, Moses?" demanded that resolute lady. "Take
some more tea, Cally. You must really try to eat something, my child--"

"I have eaten--a great deal," said Cally. And pushing back her chair
then, she added: "I think I--I'll try to rest a little while, mamma. I
feel--tired after the trip."

"Do!" said mamma, further encouraged. "Sleep a little if you can, my
dear. It's just what you need...."

But Cally did not sleep. It had seemed to her that she must be alone for
a time, to try to think out what was to happen; but now she saw that she
had no need to think. Of the complex nervous and emotional reaction
which had brought her flying home, she had, indeed, seemed to understand
nothing except that it was irresistible; her mind was like a dark cloud,
refusing to yield up its meanings. Nevertheless, there seemed to be no
doubt as to what she must do now....

Mrs. Heth, having remained downstairs half an hour longer, asc