still
thought that Hugo Canning, the gone but not forgotten, was the royal
contributor. The girl, indeed, observed with relief that mamma's
militant energies were once more in full swing. She had spent six weeks
with the little lady when every particle of fight had been flattened out
of her, and that was an experience she was not anxious to repeat.

Cally herself was glad to be at home again, though this was a
home-coming like none other she had ever known. Four months' use had not
robbed memory of its poignancy, and the moment of arrival at the House
she found unexpectedly painful. However, there came at once the
remeeting with papa, and the first and worst hour of reconnection with
the old life again was lubricated with reunion and much talk.

Mr. Heth had been lonely and somewhat depressed during the summer, as
his letters had revealed. But he was unaffectedly happy at having his
wife and daughter back, and lingered over the breakfast-table till
nearly ten o'clock, so much did he have to ask, and to tell, about
the summer.

Of that summer Carlisle never afterwards liked to talk. The first weeks
of it always stood out in her mind as the most wretched period of her
life. All spirit, all pluck, all dignity and self-respect appeared to
have been crushed out by the disasters which had befallen her. There was
absolutely nothing left on earth to be thankful for, except that the
engagement had never been announced.

Through these days Cally hadn't seemed to care that Jack Dalhousie had
killed himself, hadn't cared if the constrained tone of Mattie Allen's
"steamer-letter"--which said that Mattie was terribly sorry, dear, but
was vague as to what--indicated that the Heth glories had undergone a
great and permanent eclipse. All her consciousness seemed sucked into
the great ragged hole in her life left by Canning's going. Not till now,
it seemed, had she realized to what measure her prince of lovers had
twined himself into the reaches of her being. To pluck him, at a word,
from her heart would have been a difficult task at best, and it was made
the more difficult for her in that she did not, at first, put her will
into it. For there had lingered in her a sort of stunned incredulity:
she could not quite believe that their quarrel had been irretrievable,
that Hugo was gone forever. In the four days' waiting and hiding in New
York, even after she had put the ocean definitely between them, she
multiplied her woes by keeping th