“Why, my dear!  What’s all this about?...  Do you mean you’ve let your feelings be hurt by my going off?  Why, you—­”

“It isn’t that.”

The nature of his understanding seemed to stir something in her, and she went on in a rather steadier voice: 

“I’ve been thinking of something you said to me once—­that I wasn’t the girl you had asked to marry you ...  It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve learned that that was the truth.  I’m not—­”

She was checked, to her surprise, by a soft laugh.

“So that’s been it!...  I never imagined—­no wonder!...  Why, Cally!  How could you suppose I meant it?  Don’t you know I was angry that day?—­off my head?  Would I—­”

“But it’s true!  I’m not that girl at all—­I feel differently—­I—­”

“Well!  Let’s not waste good time in mare’s nests of that sort.  Why, dear little girl, would I be here now, if I wasn’t satisfied as no other man on earth—­”

“But I’m not satisfied, Hugo.”

Cally turned now, faced him fully, a faint color coming into her cheek.  In the man’s handsome eyes she had surprised an unmistakable complacence.

“I’m not satisfied,” she said, hurriedly, “to know that we are miles apart, and drifting further every minute.  Don’t you see there’s no sympathy—­no understanding—­between us?  What interests me, appeals to me, what is really my natural self—­that only annoys you, makes you think—­”

“I’ve been at fault there, I own,” he interrupted, soothingly, nodding his head respectfully up and down.  “To tell the truth, I’ve been so immensely interested in you,—­in Carlisle the woman,—­that I haven’t seemed able to make proper allowance for your—­your other interests.  I promise to turn over a new leaf there.  And, on your side, I am sure, you do realize, Carlisle—­”

“Hugo,” said the girl, desperately, “you don’t understand me.  I am trying to say that I can’t marry you.  I cannot.”

Then the faint hum of voices from the dining-room down the hall became quite audible in the library.  By the ebbing of color from Hugo’s virile face, Cally knew that she had penetrated his satisfaction at last; but by the look in his eyes she learned that she had lodged no conviction in him.

“I hesitated when you asked me in September,” said she, slowly, and trying her best to make her voice sound firm.  “I should have made up my mind sooner—­I’ve been to blame.  I’m sorry to—­”

He said in a slightly hoarsened voice:  “What has happened since I left you this afternoon?”

What, indeed?  Everything seemed to have happened.

“Something did happen ...  But I—­I don’t think there’s any use to talk about it.”

“Tell me what has happened.  I have a right to know.”

“I will, if you wish—­but it won’t do any good....  I went out, to my cousins’.  And at the door, as I came back, I—­I met Colonel Dalhousie.  He stopped me ... expressed his opinion of me.  He said things that I—­I—­”