the
day it happened? She has told everybody it was Aunt Isabel
who came downstairs and told her and others the story that
they afterwards repeated. And then, besides, it seems to be
generally understood that you were the one who wanted to
straighten things out when you had no idea it was too late,
and everybody whose opinion is worth having knows it's easy
enough to slip into a mistake, but takes a lot of spunk to
stand up and say so long afterwards. Good-bye again.

Hen.

Carlisle removed this postscript, tore it into small pieces, and put the
pieces in the waste-basket under a newspaper. Later in the afternoon she
had to go into her mother's bedroom to recover a novel which the older
lady had abstracted for her own perusal. She found her mother lying on
the bed, an open letter in her hand and on her face the marks of
rare tears.

Carlisle, turning away with her book, hesitated. The two women had not
spoken a word all that day.

"What's the matter, mamma?" she said constrainedly.

Mrs. Heth, stirring a little on the bed, said, with difficulty: "The
Associated Charities met to elect new officers. I am--omitted from the
board." She added, in a voice from which she could not keep the
self-pity: "I should naturally--have been president this year."

Her crushed mildness touched Carlisle abruptly. For the first time in
all this trouble, perhaps for the first time in her life, she had a
considerate and sympathetic thought for her mother. It was mamma, it
seemed, upon whom the reprisals of society were to fall most heavily,
yet it was she, Cally, who had caused it all. Suppose she had been a
good daughter, to begin with; suppose she had even been an obedient
daughter, and had kept her own counsel, as mamma had commanded and
implored. Ah, how different would have been this ghastly summer!...

She walked over to the bed, quite pale, put her hand on her mother's
rumpled hair, and said with some agitation:

"I'm very sorry to have given you all this trouble, mamma."

Mrs. Heth looked up at her, her small eyes winking.

"Oh--I--I'm sure you meant to do what you thought was right. But--oh,
Cally!..."

And then she was weeping in her daughter's arms.

Perhaps the stout little lady was ready now for a reconciliation.
Perhaps the strain of silent censoriousness had worn out even her strong
will. Perhaps, in some far cranny of her practical heart, there was a
spark which secr