There was a hopeful view.  The whole thing was so confused, just as he himself had admitted, more than once.  It might all be put on the ground of a mistake, a little misunderstanding, recently discovered.  You could tell, and not go into all the mixed-up details.  Jack Dalhousie would then gratefully return from Texas (where he was really getting on much better than he had ever done at home—­Dr. Vivian had practically said so); his father would quietly take him back; and it would be generally understood that Jack was not a coward now, and was greatly improved morally by the disciplinary exile, and everything would be all right.  But of course the difficulty here was that somebody (like Colonel Dalhousie, for instance) might think to ask why the discovery of the little misunderstanding came now, instead of six months ago.  You could hardly reply to such an one that you had just discovered the mistake as the result of a flare-up, caused by a slum doctor’s giving twenty-five thousand dollars to buy an old hotel.  Who would understand that, when you didn’t yourself?...

Carlisle, indeed, being a practical girl, did not linger long on the optimistic prospect.  For to-night at least, “telling” seemed a matter too dreadful to contemplate.  Colonel Dalhousie was an irascible and solitary widower with one son whom he had once been proud of; and this son, having been strangely compelled to take a lady’s word as to his own conduct, had been disgraced by that word, cast out with his father’s curse upon his forehead.  Was it likely that these two would take the discovery of a little misunderstanding now with a charming quiet courtesy?—­that, shouting the discovery abroad to save their faces, they would have due regard for careful qualifications and for striking the right note?  The reply was the negative:  it was not at all likely.

Cally knew the world’s rough judgments, where all is black or all is white, and ifs and buts go overboard as spoiling the strong color scheme.  And well she knew the way of horrid gossip; none better.  That she, Carlisle Heth, had deliberately lied merely to save her name from public association with young Dalhousie’s, and by this lie had ruined a boy who in his way had loved her well:  such would be the story which the angry Colonel (perhaps coming to shoot papa besides) would throw to the four winds, to be rolled in the mouth of gossip forevermore.  O what a tasty morsel was here, my countrymen!...

Staring fearfully into the dusk, Carlisle pictured herself as hearing such a story about Evey or Mattie:  she perceived at once, with sickening sensations, how intensely she would be interested in it.  Yes; once started, it would sweep through drawing-rooms and clubs like fire.  With what glee would the world’s coarse tongue make its reprisals upon brilliant success!  Town-talk the lovely Miss Heth would be, spotted all over with that horrid tattle from which she (and Hugo) had ever so shuddered and shrunk....