If with Mats and Evey, so and much more so with others, less genuinely friendly.  Nobody took the responsibility of open condemnation, as by “cutting” Mrs. B. Thornton Heth or her daughter.  On the other hand, nobody forgot; nobody made allowances; nobody asked a single question.  Judgment was obviously passed, and everybody seemed perfectly clear about the verdict.  The Heths were people to be treated with respect as long as they kept their money, but between you and me, their social fortunes had received a stain which would not wear off.  Hugo Canning had had it exactly right.  Cally Heth would be pointed at to the longest day she lived....

Cally, after the first shrinking, was possessed by a sense of anti-climax.  Life had a brassy ring.  She had come home with at least something of her mother’s military keenness for the “campaign” of vindication, but within a day or two she was thinking, rather cynically and cheaply, that the game was not worth the candle.  What difference did it all make, in her actual life?  People might whisper and nudge behind her back, but their invitations seemed to come in much the same as ever, poor mamma pouncing on each as it came, with a carefully appraising eye.  Wasn’t there a hollowness in all this, something wanting?...

Untrained for analysis as she was, she had not thought of herself, in the months in Europe, as “changed” exactly.  It took this recontact with the familiar environment to reveal to her definitely that her experiences of the spring and summer had not rolled through her as through an iron tube.  Here were the old stimuli (as scientific fellows term them); but they failed to bring the old reactions.  She was aware that the elevation of the family position, or its rescue, no longer filled her whole horizon.  Old values shifted.  In particular, she found her soul revolting at the prospect of another season—­her fifth—­another winter of endless parties, now with a secret campaign thrown in.

“I’m tired of the same old round, that’s all,” she said, moodily.  “I want something new—­something different.”

“There’s plenty that’s new and different, Cally,” said Henrietta Cooney, cheerfully, “if you really want to go in for it.  And ten times as interesting as your old society....”

“And while I think of it,” added Hen, “I want to book you now for Saturday afternoon, four-thirty—­open meeting at the Woman’s Club on What Can We Do to Help the Poor.  Don’t say no.  This new man Pond’s going to speak, Director of the Settlement.  He’ll give us something to take home and think about.”

This conversation took place on the way home from a meeting of the Equal Suffrage League, to which Henrietta had borne off Cally, not so completely against the latter’s will as you might have supposed.  And oddly enough, Cally found that she could talk quite freely to her poor cousin, partly because of Hen’s insignificance in the gay world, partly, perhaps, because of the way she had written during the summer.