ic gaze, revealing shining white teeth and
glimpses of a rose-lined mouth. And if "he was a Hun, she had always
been the loveliest of them, God wot....

"I'm beginning to believe," said she, "that you're not such a very
strange man, after...."

So she ended; her gaze shifting, the smile dying on her lip. For the
door of the library had opened authoritatively, and that difficulty
which had embarrassed her all through the afternoon suddenly confronted
her upon the threshold.

Mr. Heth, of the Works, en route to his study, was briefly surprised by
the little tableau he had stumbled upon. But seeing young men about the
house at all hours wan no nine days' wonder for him; and he came on in
with quite his usual air.

"Ah, Cally! Didn't know anybody was in here," said papa; and he glanced
from her, with amiable expectancy, toward the stranger. "What's this
confabulation about?"

Cally felt herself turning white. She steadied herself with one hand on
the writing-leaf of the desk.

"We were talking about the new Works," said she.... "Papa--I want to
introduce a good friend of mine--Dr. Vivian."

"Oh, Mr. Heth!... I'm so glad to know you, sir."

Thus the fearless young voice at her side. But Cally was gazing,
transfixed, at her father, on whose face the friendly greeting air was
giving place to astonished displeasure, not untouched with indignation.
He had stopped short in the middle of the floor, and the hand he had
been automatically putting out fell dead at his side.

"Oh!--Ah!--Dr. Vivian!" said Mr. Heth, with the stiffest inclination.
And then, his look going from one to the other of the two young people,
he added, as if involuntarily: "_Vivian_?... Ah! I'd--have expected a
different-looking man!"

The pause then, the suspense of all action from the world, was
infinitesimal. But it seemed long to Cally. And she thought she could
never forgive her father if he turned away, leaving this slight upon
her friend.

"Papa," she began, unsteadily, "I don't think...."

But once again her sentence hung unended. V.V., advancing, came then
into her line of vision; and Cally saw that he had no thought for the
cover of her skirt. Her father's forbidding deportment had not escaped
the young man; there were both a diffidence and a dignity in his
bearing. And yet she saw that his face wore like a flower that guileless
and confiding look he had, the look of a man who cannot doubt that, in
their hearts, all mean as kindly as he