The light showed another change in the young man's face. He took the
hand, and said with sudden strange feeling:

"Let my life prove it."

So Cally turned away thinking that she had found that rarest thing among
men, a friend of women.

And Mr. V.V. walked off blindly up the lamplit street, his heart a
singing and a pain.

XXVII

Of one of the Triumphs of Cally's Life, and the Tete-a-tete
following, which vaguely depresses her; of the Little
Work-Girl who brought the Note that Sunday, oddly remet at
Gentlemen's Furnishings.

Canning was absent more than two weeks. His attorney's business had
brought entanglements before and behind; he was by no means a free man
even now. Not all the powers of government could have detained him, we
may be sure, had he considered such detention hurtful to the dearest
matter in the world. But Canning, in the peculiar circumstances, had
concluded that a period of meditation was well, that absence made the
heart grow fonder; and, if human calculations are worth anything at all,
his conclusions were amply justified. Through the days of their
separation his chosen had constantly felt upon her the weight of that
vast intangible pressure which pins each mortal of us, except the
strong, to his own predestined groove. Chiefly mamma, but many other
things, too, had been pressing Cally steadily from thoughts of useful
deeds, of which she knew so little, toward thoughts of Mrs. Hugo
Canning, of which she knew so much. For sixteen days, time and
circumstance had played straight into her lover's hands....

Hugo paused to be welcomed, on his way from the train, Olympian of mien,
and beautifully dressed, he looked indeed exactly the sort of man who
would shortly have use for the contents of the little velvet box, at
this moment reposing snugly in his waistcoat pocket. Still, he had
turned up the collar of his big travelling-coat, and a slight hoarseness
indicated that the throat trouble which had sent him south last year had
returned with the first frost.

"I can draw on it for another six months' furlough," said he, meeting
Cally's eyes with gay meaning, "just as soon as I have need for such
a thing."

He had come this time as the open gallant, Lochinvar in all men's sight.
If his lady desired ceremonies all in order, in sooth she should have
them. For the first week of his absence, he had strategically allowed
himself to be lost in silence. And then the pos