ping off her robe as she glided. In an amazingly short time she was
back again, breathing hard, and dressed for no-quarter affray.

"You didn't talk downstairs, Cally? No one pumped you as to what had
happened?"

"No, I spoke to no one."

Mrs. Heth wielded hatpins before the mirror, the glitter surviving in
her eyes.

"I am putting on a hat," she threw out, "to give matters a casual air. A
public hotel's a hotbed of gossip. Everything depends on the story's
being started right--on just the right note.... Thank God, I'm here!"

"Lie down," added Mrs. Heth, and Carlisle lay down.

The most exhaustive details of the affair had not, perhaps, been
laboriously collected as yet, but luckily Mrs. Heth was not the sort
that requires a mass of verbose testimony and dull statistics. The right
note awaited her touch six floors below, and time was pressing. Already
her mind had flown well ahead, perceived with precision just what was
required. Willie must be seen, and at least two ladies, of different
sets, great gossips, for preference; and to these she would confide,
with some little just indignation but without excitement, the astounding
truth about the young blackleg who, having boarded and upset her
daughter's boat, turned coward and scuttled off, ignoring her frightened
cries. Nor would she fail to express her sincere sympathy for Colonel
Dalhousie, whose heart (she understood) the behavior of his degenerate
son had broken before now....

"Do you want Flora with you?"

"No--I'd rather be alone."

"Remain quietly here till I return."

Briefly framed in the doorway, Mrs. Heth added: "You must get some
sleep to be fresh for the evening ... _I'll_ nail their slanderous
falsehoods."

Her daughter's glance upon her was touched with a flash of admiration,
the more striking in that she herself was quite unconscious of it.

Exact definition of desire and a simple strength of purpose from which
all aims of others bound back stone-dead: what brilliance of genius or
quintessence of mother-wit can hope to outdo this immortal combination?

Echo, solitary, answers ...

Mrs. Heth's return to the upper regions, an hour later, trumpeted
complete victory. The right note was struck; all was settled. Carlisle,
it appeared, had trusted insufficiently to the virtue of the Heth name.
Of horrid gossip there had been, at the worst, no more than a bare hint
or two, an attenuated suggestion. Malicious as the world was, few,
indeed, had