who came downstairs and told her and others the story that they afterwards repeated.  And then, besides, it seems to be generally understood that you were the one who wanted to straighten things out when you had no idea it was too late, and everybody whose opinion is worth having knows it’s easy enough to slip into a mistake, but takes a lot of spunk to stand up and say so long afterwards.  Good-bye again.

     Hen.

Carlisle removed this postscript, tore it into small pieces, and put the pieces in the waste-basket under a newspaper.  Later in the afternoon she had to go into her mother’s bedroom to recover a novel which the older lady had abstracted for her own perusal.  She found her mother lying on the bed, an open letter in her hand and on her face the marks of rare tears.

Carlisle, turning away with her book, hesitated.  The two women had not spoken a word all that day.

“What’s the matter, mamma?” she said constrainedly.

Mrs. Heth, stirring a little on the bed, said, with difficulty:  “The Associated Charities met to elect new officers.  I am—­omitted from the board.”  She added, in a voice from which she could not keep the self-pity:  “I should naturally—­have been president this year.”

Her crushed mildness touched Carlisle abruptly.  For the first time in all this trouble, perhaps for the first time in her life, she had a considerate and sympathetic thought for her mother.  It was mamma, it seemed, upon whom the reprisals of society were to fall most heavily, yet it was she, Cally, who had caused it all.  Suppose she had been a good daughter, to begin with; suppose she had even been an obedient daughter, and had kept her own counsel, as mamma had commanded and implored.  Ah, how different would have been this ghastly summer!...

She walked over to the bed, quite pale, put her hand on her mother’s rumpled hair, and said with some agitation: 

“I’m very sorry to have given you all this trouble, mamma.”

Mrs. Heth looked up at her, her small eyes winking.

“Oh—­I—­I’m sure you meant to do what you thought was right.  But—­oh, Cally!...”

And then she was weeping in her daughter’s arms.

Perhaps the stout little lady was ready now for a reconciliation.  Perhaps the strain of silent censoriousness had worn out even her strong will.  Perhaps, in some far cranny of her practical heart, there was a spark which secretly admired Cally for her suicidal madness.  At any rate, drying her eyes presently, she said: 

“How Mary Page will gloat over this....  Well, we can’t go on this way, my child.  We’ll die if we don’t have some diversion.  Lord knows we’ll need all our strength for the fall.”

And still later, she suddenly cried:  “LET’S GO TO PARIS!”

To Paris they went; and there, occupying more fashionable quarters, began to look about for pleasure.  The looking required effort at first and was scantily rewarded; but of course it was not long before the women’s spirits responded to the more hopeful atmosphere.  Soon they fell in with some lively people from home, the Wintons, who, being a peg or two lower than the Heths in the gay world, made it almost indelicately plain that they were completely unaware of anything’s having happened.  To Paris also came J. Forsythe Avery.