Musing long upon the family attitude in dull European days and nights, the good lady had gradually developed a complete code of etiquette, as of funerals.  Thus she had concluded that to give an elaborate and superbly costly entertainment—­ordinarily an unanswerable act of vindication—­would under the circumstances be “in bad taste.”  A series of small but exclusive dinners would better strike the note on the entertaining side; while, as for more public proof of martyrhood finely borne, she at length decided that frank deeds of selfless charity would be about the proper thing.  She had no sooner come in touch again with the home atmosphere than she determined to give ten thousand dollars, perfectly anonymously, to Mr. Dayne’s Settlement House Foundation.

Carlisle thought these developments odd enough, and indifferently pictured her mother’s dismay, if suddenly informed whose cause it was she was so enthusiastically pitching in to help.  For it seemed that she alone knew that the Settlement everybody was talking about was not Mr. Dayne’s at all, but Dr. Vivian’s, who wished his gift to be kept a secret.  Carlisle said nothing to unsettle her mother, who possibly still thought that Hugo Canning, the gone but not forgotten, was the royal contributor.  The girl, indeed, observed with relief that mamma’s militant energies were once more in full swing.  She had spent six weeks with the little lady when every particle of fight had been flattened out of her, and that was an experience she was not anxious to repeat.

Cally herself was glad to be at home again, though this was a home-coming like none other she had ever known.  Four months’ use had not robbed memory of its poignancy, and the moment of arrival at the House she found unexpectedly painful.  However, there came at once the remeeting with papa, and the first and worst hour of reconnection with the old life again was lubricated with reunion and much talk.

Mr. Heth had been lonely and somewhat depressed during the summer, as his letters had revealed.  But he was unaffectedly happy at having his wife and daughter back, and lingered over the breakfast-table till nearly ten o’clock, so much did he have to ask, and to tell, about the summer.

Of that summer Carlisle never afterwards liked to talk.  The first weeks of it always stood out in her mind as the most wretched period of her life.  All spirit, all pluck, all dignity and self-respect appeared to have been crushed out by the disasters which had befallen her.  There was absolutely nothing left on earth to be thankful for, except that the engagement had never been announced.

Through these days Cally hadn’t seemed to care that Jack Dalhousie had killed himself, hadn’t cared if the constrained tone of Mattie Allen’s “steamer-letter”—­which said that Mattie was terribly sorry, dear, but was vague as to what—­indicated that the Heth glories had undergone a great and permanent eclipse.  All her consciousness seemed sucked into the great