“It was too much for one person to carry alone,” continued the alien voice, sounding rather hard-pressed now.  “I happened to be the one person in position to help, and I failed you....  I’d like you to know....”

But the girl had risen, ending his speech, her need to talk with him past.  Her self-absorption was without pretence.  Wan and white and with a redness about her misty dark eyes, she stood facing the old enemy, and spoke in a worn little voice: 

“You said you’d see his father for me, didn’t you?”

The man, having risen with her, looked hurriedly away.

“Yes—­of course.  I’ll go.  At once.”

And then, as if pledged to speak, though well he knew that she had no thought for him, he added abruptly:  “But you mustn’t think of yourself as being alone with this.  I promise you I’ll keep the knowledge, to punish me, that if—­if I’d been the sort of man you needed, you’d have settled it all long ago....”

“That’s absurd....” said Cally, somehow touched, but with no conception of the depths from which he spoke....  “I never meant to tell at all if it hadn’t been for you.”

She added, seeing him turn away, looking around the long room:  “I think you must have left it in the hall.”

And then, winking a little, she began to blow her nose, and moved away toward the door.

She encountered the butler, old Moses, entering from the hall.  There was a yellow envelope upon his tray, though she had heard no ring at the bell.

“Excuse me, ma’am.  This message just kem for you, an’ I signed for it at the do’.”

Carlisle thought instantly, Hugo!...  And when, having quite forgotten the man standing silent behind her, she broke open the envelope with nervous fingers, the hope of her heart was at once confirmed: 

     Am coming to you.  Arrive four-ten this afternoon.  Wait for
     me.  H.C.H.C.

Did a tiny corner of her tightly closed mind open a little as she read? Wait for me....

She turned back to Jack Dalhousie’s representative with something like eagerness, to find his eyes fixed upon her.

“Oh!—­would it do any harm to wait a little while, do you think?—­just till this afternoon?”

“No, no,” he said, in rather an odd voice, “it will do no harm now.”

“Then I’ll send word to you this afternoon—­at five or six o’clock,” said Cally, with vague flutterings of relief, of hope, perhaps.  And then, moved by a sudden impulse, she added:  “I will tell you why I want to wait.  I am engaged to be married.  I think I should tell my fiance, before anything is done....”

To this V. Vivian made no reply.  He was advancing to the door.  And then as he paused before the stricken Hun, and saw the glitter of a tear on the piquant gold-and-black lashes, the young man’s twisting heart seemed suddenly to loosen, and he said quite simply: 

“Won’t you let me say how fine and brave a thing you’re doing, how splendid a—­”