"I regard it," answered Mrs. Heth, "as a tribute to the dead."
"Why, she doesn't know what she's doing!... You must simply forbid her going."
"Forbid her!" groaned the little general, like one flicked upon a new wound.
And, before proceeding further, she was actually artful and strong enough to make the young man arrange--provisionally, she said,--about reservations, a matter which valuably consumed time.
If the good lady had now believed that all was lost, she would have instantly invoked Canning's authority, telling him everything. But as yet she would not risk that, clinging hard to the hope that Cally's sanity might come again with the sun of a new day. To-night she was for the greatest suppression possible, one eye perpetually on the little travelling-clock. However, the telephoning at last over, more details could not be avoided. It perforce transpired that the dead man was the villain of that unfortunate episode at the Beach, which Hugo possibly recalled,--he did,--and finally that it was worry over his disgrace, aided by unremitting potations, that had brought him to his death....
The faint frown on Hugo's brow deepened, became more troubled. He paced the floor.
"And still," said he, "I fail to see why Carlisle must go home to-night. What does she expect to do when she gets there?"
What, indeed? Mrs. Heth mentioned again the tribute to the dead. The girl, in her shocked state, considered it unfeeling for her to remain here enjoying herself with Hugo, as if nothing had happened. Foolish?--who saw it better than she, Mrs. Heth? But that was Cally, sweet and good at heart always, yet liable to emotional fits in upset moments when opposition only made her ill. Let her have her morbid way to-night, and she would return in twenty-four hours, her own sweet natural self....
Canning liked it less and less. Was not this clearly a moment when the strong mind of a man should assert itself over foolish feminine hysteria?
"How did she happen to get this news just now?" he asked, abruptly. "Who was it she called up, about what?"
He had lost sight of this point in the general flurry of sensation. It struck him now just too late to bring results. At the moment, the door from the bedrooms opened--exactly as it had two hours earlier, only with what a difference!--and Carlisle appeared on, the threshold, very pale and subdued, but to her lover's eye never more moving.