Mrs. Heth came gliding through the portieres from the hall.  Her face was one vast inquiry, lit by beams; it made an uproarious demand such as a child of three could have understood.  Still, to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding, mamma briefly gave voice: 

“Well?”

Cally laughed, and held up her betrothal finger, which was unadorned.

“I’m not,” said she.

Mamma’s face fell.

“Don’t look so blank!” said the daughter, with a little laugh and shrug.  “It’s all going to happen next week, by the book....  Don’t you know I’m perfectly safe?”

* * * * *

Mr. Heth heard Cally’s business news with open indignation.  She made her report to him that night, just after dinner; and she saw her father’s business manner emerge sharply from beneath his genial domesticity.

The “new law” was an old story to the owner of the Cheroot Works.  He kept apprised of the signs of the times; and he happened to know in some detail the provisions of the pernicious legislation the Labor Commissioner was cooking up in secret,—­“that’d confiscate two years’ profits from every near mill in town,” said MacQueen.  But the rest was news, and highly unwelcome news.  To fight blackmail legislation against progressive business was comparatively simple; but a string of lies in the newspapers made a more insidious assault, injuring a man’s credit, his standing as a conservative financier, his ability to inspire “confidence”:  valuable possessions to the President of the Fourth National Bank, and already indefinably impaired by the sensational family matter last spring....

“Vivian!—­That fellow!” he exclaimed, recalling not only the Severe Arraignment, but the cataclysm in the House....

“Why, Cally!  I thought you considered him sort of a friend of yours!”

“Not that, exactly,” said Cally, at a considerable loss.  “Still, I was very much surprised....  Do you mind about the—­the articles, particularly, papa?”

“I do.”

“Isn’t there something you can do—­to have it all stopped?  Couldn’t you have a suit—­or—?”

Her father exploded.  She had touched a sore point.

“Sue!  Sue a lot of paupers that haven’t got a shirt to their backs!  Put ‘em in prison?—­likely with a lot more paupers on the jury, thinkin’ a successful business man’s anybody’s meat. Sue!—­and what’ll you get?  I’ll tell you!  An impudent—­offensive—­malicious muckraking of your own private business....”

Cally, looking at papa’s indignant face, felt much drawn to him.  However, the business conversation was here interrupted, Cally being called away to the telephone.  She went, wondering intently if she could not somehow help in this threatened trouble.  She had felt an impulse toward doing something useful.  What more useful than assisting to shield her father from undeserved abuse?...

“It’s only me, Cally,” said Henrietta Cooney’s voice, “or I, as they’ve got it in the grammars.  I just called up to tell you not to forget the meeting to-morrow.”