hed the
lover deeply. He hardly needed Mrs. Heth's frightened hints about the
necessity of gentleness with firmness in dealing with a flare-up. Had he
himself not known the wilful nature of her spirit in excitement, that
never-forgotten evening in the library?

And when the striker of the right note withdrew at last, and Carlisle
herself appeared in the drawing-room, very white and subdued, the last
remnant of a personal grievance vanished from Canning's manner. Nothing
could have exceeded the tenderness of his greeting....

"Did my telegram surprise you?" he said presently. "I got so troubled
about you after you were gone.... I couldn't bear to leave you alone
with this...."

And Cally said, with a quiver in her voice: "Oh, Hugo!... If you only
knew how I've wanted you to-day!..."

She meant it with every fibre of her being. Doubly he had convinced her
now that he could never be shocked or disgusted with her, that in him a
perfect sympathy enfolded her, covering all mistakes. That he might not
understand quite yet how she felt about everything was possible, but
that was nothing now, by the fact that he understood _her_, at any rate,
as mamma never could.

Some discussion of the matter was of course necessary. And presently,
after they had talked a little, quite naturally, of his journey and how
she had slept last night, the lovers drifted on into Mr. Heth's little
study, reopened against this need.

Here they sat down and began to talk. And here, in five minutes,
Carlisle's heart began mysteriously to sink within her....

She had been going through a series of violent emotional experiences in
which he had had not the slightest share, and now required of him that
he should catch up with the results of these experiences, upon a
moment's notice and at a single bound. She could not realize the extreme
difficulty of this feat. Nor, indeed, could Canning himself, confident
by the ease with which his love had appeared to put down all personal
irritations. To his seeming, as to hers, they had met in perfect
spiritual reunion.

Accordingly, when he proposed that the matter be allowed to rest quiet
for a day or two, till they were all in a little better frame of mind to
view it calmly, he offered a temporary solution which he felt certain
would seem to her as reasonable and as tactfully considerate as it
did to him.

"In this moment of shock and distress," he said, with admirable
restraint, "you are not quite in the