mportant that was meant to stay
where it had been fixed. There was pain with these tears....

The man from the Dabney House said nothing. His was a more than woman's
intuition. There was a long silence in the drawing-room....

But after a time, when there were signs that the tension was relaxing
and the sudden storm passing, he spoke in his simple voice:

"You see your message would have been all that you meant, but for the
terrible coincidence. You mustn't take it--so much upon yourself. That
wouldn't be right. Think of that poor girl out there, who is reproaching
herself so to-day. And then, besides, you must know I realize that I
should have seen you last week.... You had every right to expect that,
as I was--in a measure--Dal's representative...."

Cally hardly heard him.

Her back toward him, she had produced from some recess a small
handkerchief, and was silently removing the traces of her tears. She had
dimly supposed that there would be a long discussion; all at once it was
clear that there was nothing to discuss. And she thought of Hugo, and a
little of her mother, waiting upstairs....

"It was too much for one person to carry alone," continued the alien
voice, sounding rather hard-pressed now. "I happened to be the one
person in position to help, and I failed you.... I'd like you
to know...."

But the girl had risen, ending his speech, her need to talk with him
past. Her self-absorption was without pretence. Wan and white and with a
redness about her misty dark eyes, she stood facing the old enemy, and
spoke in a worn little voice:

"You said you'd see his father for me, didn't you?"

The man, having risen with her, looked hurriedly away.

"Yes--of course. I'll go. At once."

And then, as if pledged to speak, though well he knew that she had no
thought for him, he added abruptly: "But you mustn't think of yourself
as being alone with this. I promise you I'll keep the knowledge, to
punish me, that if--if I'd been the sort of man you needed, you'd have
settled it all long ago...."

"That's absurd...." said Cally, somehow touched, but with no conception
of the depths from which he spoke.... "I never meant to tell at all if
it hadn't been for you."

She added, seeing him turn away, looking around the long room: "I think
you must have left it in the hall."

And then, winking a little, she began to blow her nose, and moved away
toward the door.

She encountered the butler, old Moses, entering from