The simple thought seemed to cure her instantly of her wish.  She had tried having a confidant and it had brought her to this; henceforward let her keep her own counsel. (So she mused, walking homeward in the brilliant sunshine and light airs with J. Forsythe Avery, who had just conquered his pique over his rejection last January.) That her one confidant’s honorable silence expressed his trust that she herself would “tell” was possibly true; but that, in this no-quarter conflict between them, was merely so much the worse for him.  She would not think of him at all.  She had run away from him every time she had seen him; now she had but to do it once more, and all would be as if it had never been....

At the Sabbath dinner-table, which was to-day uninvaded by guests, the Heths’ talk was animated.  The imminent separation brought a certain softness into the family atmosphere; papa basked in it.  He had spent his Sunday morning playing sixteen holes of golf at the Country Club, and would have easily made the full round but for slicing three new balls into the pond on the annoying seventeenth drive.  This had provoked him into smashing his driver, as he had a score of only eighty-eight at that point, which was well below his personal bogey.  Even mamma affected interest in her spouse’s explanations of how it all happened.

“Of course the caddy simply slipped the balls in his pockets the minute your back was turned—­they’re all thieves, the little ragamuffins,” said she.  “And, by the way, I haven’t telephoned the bank about the silver.”

Encouraged by his ladies’ consideration, Mr. Heth proposed a little afternoon jaunt with Cally.

“It’s too pretty a day to stay in,” said he.  “Let’s take the car, eh, and run down and look at that new cantilever bridge at Apsworth?”

“Oh, papa!” said Cally, regretfully.  “I promised Mr. Avery I’d take a walk with him.  He looked so fat and forlorn I didn’t have the heart to refuse.  I’m so sorry.”

Mr. Heth started to quote something about your daughter’s being your daughter, but when Cally added, “You know I’d lots rather go with you, papa,” he changed his mind, and went off to his nap instead.

Mamma similarly departed.  Cally, not feeling nappy, sat in the library and wrote to her lover the last letter but one she would write before seeing him in New York.  Her eager pen flew:  but so did the minutes also, or did the impetuous Avery anticipate the moment of his engagement?  His tender ring broke unexpectedly across her betrothal thoughts, and Cally returned to earth with a start ...  Good heavens! Four o’clock already!—­and she with twenty minutes’ getting ready to do!

She caught up the pages of the unfinished letter, and skipped for the stairs.  In the hall there was unbroken quiet, with no sound of a servant coming.  Cally paused, listening, and then remembered that it was Sunday afternoon, when even the best Africans are so very likely to have “just stepped out.”  Why wait?  The girl went and opened the door herself, a smile of greeting in her eye, a lively apology for her obvious unreadiness upon her lip.