“Why,” stammered Hibbs, nervously, “I don’t think I’ve said anything that anybody else hasn’t said.  I just repeated that some one said that your sister had been very friendly with Mr. Cowperwood.  I didn’t say any more than I have heard other people say around here.”

“Oh, you didn’t, did you?” exclaimed Callum, withdrawing his hand from his pocket and slapping Hibbs in the face.  He repeated the blow with his left hand, fiercely.  “Perhaps that’ll teach you to keep my sister’s name out of your mouth, you pup!”

Hibbs’s arms flew up.  He was not without pugilistic training, and he struck back vigorously, striking Callum once in the chest and once in the neck.  In an instant the two rooms of this suite were in an uproar.  Tables and chairs were overturned by the energy of men attempting to get to the scene of action.  The two combatants were quickly separated; sides were taken by the friends of each, excited explanations attempted and defied.  Callum was examining the knuckles of his left hand, which were cut from the blow he had delivered.  He maintained a gentlemanly calm.  Hibbs, very much flustered and excited, insisted that he had been most unreasonably used.  The idea of attacking him here.  And, anyhow, as he maintained now, Pethick had been both eavesdropping and lying about him.  Incidentally, the latter was protesting to others that he had done the only thing which an honorable friend could do.  It was a nine days’ wonder in the club, and was only kept out of the newspapers by the most strenuous efforts on the part of the friends of both parties.  Callum was so outraged on discovering that there was some foundation for the rumor at the club in a general rumor which prevailed that he tendered his resignation, and never went there again.

“I wish to heaven you hadn’t struck that fellow,” counseled Owen, when the incident was related to him.  “It will only make more talk.  She ought to leave this place; but she won’t.  She’s struck on that fellow yet, and we can’t tell Norah and mother.  We will never hear the last of this, you and I—­believe me.”

“Damn it, she ought to be made to go,” exclaimed Callum.

“Well, she won’t,” replied Owen.  “Father has tried making her, and she won’t go.  Just let things stand.  He’s in the penitentiary now, and that’s probably the end of him.  The public seem to think that father put him there, and that’s something.  Maybe we can persuade her to go after a while.  I wish to God we had never had sight of that fellow.  If ever he comes out, I’ve a good notion to kill him.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do anything like that,” replied Callum.  “It’s useless.  It would only stir things up afresh.  He’s done for, anyhow.”

They planned to urge Norah to marry as soon as possible.  And as for their feelings toward Aileen, it was a very chilly atmosphere which Mrs. Butler contemplated from now on, much to her confusion, grief, and astonishment.