"Well put, Hugo!" said Mrs. Heth, who held that any kind of generalization const.i.tuted good talk. She added: "Who are all these people? How would one place them?"

Canning could indicate a celebrity or two. He had bowed several times, finding acquaintances, it seemed, even in this glittering farrago. But his eyes returned to his bride-to-be, from whom he removed his gaze with reluctance to-night. She wore a dress of yellow crepe-de-chine, with a draped arrangement of blue chiffon, which followed faithfully the long lines of her figure; and a hat of blue straw with an uncurled yellow plume. It was a beautiful dress, though mamma considered it just a thought too low, even with a handkerchief put in.

And Cally looked back at her lover and thought: Who so honored and honorable as he? He'll only be sorry that I've waited so long....

"Only," she said, aloud, "they do keep the room rather hot for the provinces, where some air is preferred. More good things to eat, Hugo?

It's a collation...."

"A poor one, I'm afraid. You've touched nothing."

He dispatched an army of men to adjust electric fans, turn patent ventilators, and even to do so crude a thing as open a window.

"It is all most delicious, Hugo," rea.s.sured Mrs. Heth. "I hadn't noticed that the room was warm, either."

"My cheeks are burning. Touch my hand, Hugo. You see it's on fire."

All three looked up as a boy in b.u.t.tons stood at Carlisle's elbow, and said:

"Got your party on the wire, mum."

"Party on the wire? What's this?" said mamma.

Carlisle laid her napkin on the table. Surprise confronted her, written large on the faces of her mother and her lover; but it did not arrest her.

"I'm wanted at the telephone. Do you mind, Hugo? I won't he gone a minute."

"_But_--you mustn't go _now_, my dear!" said Mrs. Heth, astonished. "Let the boy take the number. Why--who on earth could it be, calling you _here?_--"

"I'd rather go now, mamma, if Hugo'll forgive me--"

"It's from Flora!" said Mrs. Heth, positively. "No one else knew. A telegram's come, saying your father is sick--"

Carlisle laughed and rose dazzingly, burning without but colder than Alpine snow within.

"Not in the least, mamma dear! You see I put in this call myself. I'll explain all about it in a minute...."

Explain! Why she would walk back to this table from the telephone, laughing, and saying: "Now, praise me, Hugo and mamma, for I've just been doing a deed of mercy! Do you remember that day at the Beach?..."

Was it the fear of this that she had let plague her all these days?...

"To be answered _here_--at dinner--in this public place? Why, my dear Cally, I really...."

But Hugo, the understanding, though personally opposed to interruptions during dinner, knew the folly of arguing with the whims of the unreasoners. He had risen with Carlisle, and now said: "I'll show you the way."

Cally gave him a look of exquisite grat.i.tude, but answered: "_Please_ don't trouble, Hugo! The boy will--"

"No trouble. Let's be off before the tolls eat you out of house and home."

"Oh, no! Please don't! Couldn't I have my way about such a little matter, Hugo dear?"

In this glaring publicity, the dialogue began to take on something of the nature of a "scene." Canning yielded with perfect grace.

"Of course you can, if you really prefer it. Well, then!... Hurry back."

"In two minutes," said she, with certainty; and smiled brightly into mamma's censorious concern.

On the heels of the proud page, Cally threaded her way among the glittering tables for the telephone and Jefferson 4127, unaware for once that she was the cynosure of many eyes. She was buoyed within, thrilled with a sense of strange adventure, baffling to a.n.a.lysis, but somehow comparable to that soaring moment last week. She was captain of her soul. That she was now standing by her flare-up, deliberately reattaching herself to a past which she had moved heaven and earth to cut away from her, did not occur to her, in just that way. But she was conscious of a curious inner sense of freedom, and somehow of fulfilment. And now she saw that she must have been secretly thinking of doing this for some time, nibbling fearfully at the idea....

She was alone in a gla.s.s booth, with a telephone before her, receiver off its hook. She sat down, put the receiver to her ear, and said:

"h.e.l.lo?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _PLEASE_ DON'T TROUBLE, HUGO]

There reached her only a faint great buzzing, the humming of distant wires, fleeting s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk a long way off, striking out of nowhere back into nothing.... And now she was the Lady Bountiful, stepping aside a moment from her brilliant entourage to scatter boons to the poor and needy. Jack Dalhousie would know to-morrow morning, at the latest, by the telegram from his friend Mr. V.V.,--as that little creature called him,--and whatever vexation he might be inclined to feel towards her at first, his joy and his father's would soon dispose of that. And of course he would hurry straight off with his news to that girl from the East he had fallen in love with--what a hand he was for affairs, poor old Jack!--and....

Out of the confused murmuring, a soft voice spoke clearly:

"h.e.l.lo, New York. I got your party. What's the matter?"

A nasal voice gave answer, apparently at Carlisle's elbow:

"Well, be ca'm, little one. You people got the rush-bug worsen some full-size cities aintyer? b.u.t.t out and gimme a chanst. h.e.l.lo! W'ere arey'r, Ba.s.sadoors!"

"Here I am," said Ba.s.sadoors.

"Miss Heth?"

"I am Miss Heth."

"Minute 'm...."

In the gla.s.s beside her Cally caught a reflection of her head and bare shoulders, and her eyes were shining, the long and slightly tri-corner eyes so piquantly fringed. A minute--that was all it would take. A minute more and she would thread her way back through the glitter to Hugo and mamma, and Hugo at least would say well-done....

"Well, whatsermatter? There y' are!"

The soft voice said: "All right, Dr. Vivian. Ready now!... h.e.l.lo! All right...."

"h.e.l.lo," said Cally.

Then all sounds faded away, and out of a sudden great desert of silence, she heard a man's voice, clear though it came all the way from Meeghan's Grocery, across the street from the old Dabney House, back home.

"h.e.l.lo?"

_Mr. V.V.!_

And the moment she heard that voice, Carlisle was aware that her feeling toward the owner of it had mysteriously changed somewhere in the last week, that he stood in her mind now almost as a friend. Had he not been, by the strangeness of fate, her one confidant in the world, who now could never think of her again as a poor little thing?...

"Dr. Vivian?... Can you guess who it is? Or did the operator give me away?"