* * * * *

Hugo, it was presumable, would be detained with his Mr. Deming until the latter’s departure, or near it.  He could hardly appear before nine o’clock, or even nine-thirty; and perhaps he might not come at all.  Cally had felt unable to agree with her mother’s theory that she was required to sit awaiting Hugo’s convenience there.  At all events, she had early resolved to settle the point by definitely “retiring” before his possible arrival; relying upon a worse aching head to justify her with mamma, who was not of the few to be favored with fuller confidences.

But a little after eight, when this resolve was almost ready to shape into the deed, the sensible reasoning on which it was based was suddenly upset.  The maid Flora came, bringing a new message from the preoccupied lover, brief but decisive.

The business entanglements, it appeared, had only got worse with talking.  Hugo, beyond all expectation, found himself compelled to go back to Washington with his law-partner to-night; possibly to go on to New York to-morrow.  Would Carlisle accordingly arrange to see him now, for a few moments?

“Now?”

“Yas’m, he say as soon as you c’d make it convenient.”

The girl had risen sharply in the first complete surprise of Flora’s message; she walked hastily across her floor.  But having done these things, she did not at once give the obviously due reply.  She stood by her dressing-table, staring fixedly at the colored woman, the aimless fingers of her left hand continually pulling out and putting back the silver top of a squat cut-glass bottle.  She appeared to be thinking, weighing pros and cons:  processes surely unnecessary to a pasteboard actor, sliding smoothly toward a manifest destiny.

She stood this way so long and so silent that Flora prompted with a giggle and further information.

“Miss Cyahlile, he say if you was to answer no, to say could he please speak to you a minute on the ’phone.”

Upon that Miss Carlisle was seen to replace the bottle stopper with consciousness of movement, and to turn her slate-blue eyes briefly toward the ceiling, with no movement of her head at all.

“Very well ...  Say that I’ll see him at half-past eight, for a few minutes.”

Flora, naturally, was not a woman without understanding the sign language of her sex.  It might be that she had learned the color of the Canning money—­and she had—­but her dusky heart, like yours or mine, was not for sale.

“Yas’m—­certny ...  Yas’m.  Or, Miss Cyahlile—­I mout just say we ’re mighty sorry—­but not knowin’ he was expected, and you feelin’ po’ly an’ all—­you just this minute went to baid—­an’—­”

“No!—­do as I say,” said the young mistress, quite sharply.  But, as her faithful friend turned away, she added in another voice:  “You’re a good girl, Flora....  Be sure to say just for a few minutes.”