bney House Settlement rode the crest of the "exclusive" wave this
autumn. And the fact was grasped by Mrs. B. Thornton Heth within
twenty-four hours of her home-coming, so admirably was it fitted to
her need.

Mrs. Heth had had time enough through the summer, heaven knew, to study
out the problem of restoring the family name to its former effulgence,
to decide upon the family attitude, or note, for the season ensuing. The
note, already firmly struck in her summer's letters to friends,--with
which she had taken immense pains, knowing from herself how closely they
would be scanned,--was that poor Carlisle, shocked into hysteria by the
tragedy, had magnanimously blamed herself where she had no blame beyond,
perhaps, youthful thoughtlessness. Thus they were people, and in
particular she was a person, severely persecuted for righteousness'
sake, but resolved to bear it nobly.

So much for the note, but a passive thing at best. None saw more clearly
than Mrs. Heth that a quietly resolute campaign of vindication was
necessary, none more clearly that a campaign meant money in considerable
sums. If you desired to prove anything, you must have money; stated in
another way, you could prove anything provided you spent money enough.
How best to spend large sums in this case?

Musing long upon the family attitude in dull European days and nights,
the good lady had gradually developed a complete code of etiquette, as
of funerals. Thus she had concluded that to give an elaborate and
superbly costly entertainment--ordinarily an unanswerable act of
vindication--would under the circumstances be "in bad taste." A series
of small but exclusive dinners would better strike the note on the
entertaining side; while, as for more public proof of martyrhood finely
borne, she at length decided that frank deeds of selfless charity would
be about the proper thing. She had no sooner come in touch again with
the home atmosphere than she determined to give ten thousand dollars,
perfectly anonymously, to Mr. Dayne's Settlement House Foundation.

Carlisle thought these developments odd enough, and indifferently
pictured her mother's dismay, if suddenly informed whose cause it was
she was so enthusiastically pitching in to help. For it seemed that she
alone knew that the Settlement everybody was talking about was not Mr.
Dayne's at all, but Dr. Vivian's, who wished his gift to be kept a
secret. Carlisle said nothing to unsettle her mother, who possibly