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 dreamed any justification of Dalhousie's blackguardism.
Already, it appeared, the hotel rang with objurgations of it, and him.
Still, Mrs. Heth had struck the note, and struck hard.
Carlisle was bidden to sleep, after her trying experiences, to regain
her poise and color for the evening....
Alone again in the twilight bedroom, the girl snuggled beneath a pretty
pale-blue quilt, and absently scrutinized her pink and very shiny little
finger nails. After the excitement and strain of the last hour and a
half, she felt that she was now at peace. Nothing at all was going to
happen. Nobody could say anything the least bit horrid about her, the
least bit injurious to her position. She stood exactly where she had
stood when she went out for the sail. She was not even going to have
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