dded, smiling roguishly: "You two be trusted five minutes without a
chaperon?"

Carlisle laughed dazzlingly.

"Five years, Willie. Mr. Canning is absolutely safe."

Mrs. Heth, saying archly that they would not absent themselves quite so
long as that, glided out. Willie followed, engrossed in Johnson. The
door was left half open. Johnson was presented. Their voices died away
across and down the hall....

A momentary silence fell upon Mr. Canning and Carlisle, thus deserted in
the Kerr sitting-room. It appeared to embarrass neither. Having risen,
Canning stood at the mantel, sipping his Scotch and looking down at her.
Carlisle went on cutting bread and butter, or something of that sort.
She felt agreeably excited. In the manner of the shining passer-by she
had observed just that progressiveness noted on the occasion of their
two other meetings: faintly ironic boredom yielding slowly to passive
interest, passive interest warming steadily....

She had taken off her coat, at Kerr's solicitation; she sat with lowered
lashes, the glow of the fire upon her cheek. To what measure she engaged
and intrigued the eye, Mr. Canning had had seven weeks to forget. No
dull wit, we may suppose, in appreciation of feminine masterpieces, he
seemed to see it suddenly with some force now, standing and sipping the
pleasurable Scotch. And he began to speak in a voice not previously
heard in Kerr's apartment.

"Lonely, Miss Heth, when the moon shines bright--blue, too, now that I
think of it.--You are good enough to ask if I've had a happy trip.
Happy!... Weeks of moping from dull place to duller, months ditto
staring one in the face, and for this present--the rural villa of one's
estimable cousins, with the sun and the stars for company. Really does
it seem such a trifle to you to be plucked up by the ears from one's
environment, transplanted bodily league on league, and set down on an
empty road four miles from nowhere?"

"Nowhere? You are cruel, Mr. Canning. Four miles travelled in the right
direction might bring you to a good deal. Only mountains never really
come to Mahomets, not in life."

"Ah, but I'm no Mahomet in these months, alas! to scale mountains or not
as the whim strikes me. If I were!... But no, no!--my sentence, you see,
is expressly to avoid all mountain-climbing with whatever else is
pleasant--to play the invalid, to rest, breathe deep, sleep and coddle.
And for excitement--it is my revered mother's own suggestion--w