at was
needed now was to put the man down in such a way that he would take care
not to come near her again....

Dr. Vivian, who seemed to hold fast to his one topic, was adding: "I
don't want to disappoint her, of course, particularly as \ she's sick
to-night. Just a little touch of fever, to be sure,--but she hasn't much
constitution, I fear...."

Miss Heth made no reply; the pause threatened to become a silence; and
then he said hastily, as if to save the conversation from total wreck:

"By the way, this child--Corinne Garland, her name is--is an operative
in your father's factory, Miss Heth. She's been there over two years."

Cally's head turned. For the first time she looked fully at the Cooneys'
poorhouse idol. And now she remembered that she had an annihilative
weapon against him.... Had he led up to this subject on purpose?

"Oh!... She works at my father's factory?"

The young man's look was plainly not controversial; no, it was as if he
were pleased that at last they had tapped a vein of common interest. In
one glance Carlisle's trained eye, going over him, took in his sartorial
eccentricities: in particular the "shined" shoes, the large brass
shirt-studs, and the "full-dress-suit" (exactly that) so obviously made
for a much stouter person. She saw that the man looked absurdly out of
place here, at his own uncle's. Against this background of gaiety and
glitter, of music, powder and decollete gowns, he really looked quite
like a stray from some other world: only the more so in that he himself
appeared quite unconscious of any alienship.

Well, then, let him keep to his own world. That, in fact, was precisely
what she desired of him....

"Yes, a buncher there, as they're called," he was quaintly
explaining--"quite the best one in the shop, I'm told, though she's only
eighteen years old. She has a record of 6,500 cheroots in one day--"

"But she has been taken sick at it, you say?"

"Undoubtedly she has a temperature to-night," said he, in an intent sort
of way, desirous of giving his information accurately. "I didn't stop to
take it,' as perhaps I should have done--"

"And she caught her fever at the Works, you think?"

"Oh!... Well, of course I shouldn't say that. You know--"

"But of course the Works _are_ full of terrible diseases, and everybody
who works there quickly catches something and dies?"

Then the unmistakable hostility of her tone caught his engrossed ear.
Carlisle saw his expression