himself. He moved upon her silent
father as if singing aloud an immortal faith in the goodness of his
fellows: _Though he slay me, yet will I trust him_....

But what his audible voice was saying was very simple, and a little
embarrassed:

"I've felt that I've just come to know you to-day, Mr. Heth ... to
understand things better. I suppose it's too much to hope that you can
forget what's past, all at once. But I'd be mortified to feel.... Ah,
sir!--I've felt honored by your House to-day...."

That was all; the mists lifted. He saw no difficulties, and so there
were none. Papa's face was thawing back, through several surprised
looks, to its natural kindliness; he had taken the offered hand, in the
middle of the little speech; and then, within a minute, he was saying,
quite amiably, that well, well, we'd say no more about it ... s'posed
the thing to do was to let bygones be bygones....

And papa's daughter, Cally, turned away quickly from that spectacle,
winking furiously, and wondering when she had got to be such a baby....

* * * * *

[Illustration: PAPA--I WANT TO INTRODUCE A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE--DR.
VIVIAN]

Strange things had been happening of late, it seemed; strange memories
gathering for backward thought hereafter; novel pictures ranging in
the immaterial storehouse that opens down the years. But in all Cally's
invisible collection, then or thenceforward, there was never a scene
that she saw so vividly as this: herself standing silent by the
newel-post in the wide hall; her father, distinct and genial in the
light through the open door, observing to Mr. V.V. that hard words
buttered no parsnips, as the fellow said; and V.V., half-smiling at her
over papa's broad shoulder, and saying to her with his eyes that of
course this was the way it was meant to be, all along.

XXXIII

Her Last Day, in this History; how she wakes with a Wonder
in her Heart, has her Banquet laid at the Board of the
Cooneys, dreams back over the Long Strange Year; finally how
she learns Something that not Everybody Knows: what it is
like at the End of the World.

A morning in October, and she had waked to fare forth and capture, by
hook or by crook, the most eligible parti who was ever likely to swim
into her ken. Another morning in October, and all her waking horizon
seemed filled by the knowledge that, at half-past four in the afternoon,
she would meet and tal