And against this threatened avalanche, entailing who knew what consequences, she had but the frail shield of the sense of honor—­well, then, say, the sense of chivalry—­of a man far beneath her world, whom she had frequently told herself that she disliked and despised.

A pale yellow ray of the moon, journeying upward over the coverlet, fell across her face.  She rose, pattered on slim bare feet over the chequered floor, lowered the shade.  Inside and out, all the world was still.  Cally dropped down on her chaise-longue by the window, very wide awake....  And, gradually, since she was practical, she formed a plan of action:  a plan so simple that she wondered she had not thought of it at once....

A long time she had spent in trying to think how she might compel, cajole, or bribe the man at the Dabney House to pledge her his eternal silence.  But she had not been able to think of any promising way:  each time, she brought up confronting with painful fascination the conviction that religious fellows were hard.  And out of this conviction there grew, in time, her own resolve.  Well, then, she would be hard, too.  She would avoid seeing or having any communication with Dr. Vivian, and if he dared to repeat anything, she would simply laugh it all aside.  She would deny that she ever said any such preposterous thing in her life.  She would have to do that; her duty to others demanded it....  And what could he do then?  It would merely be his word against hers, Miss Heth’s.  He would be left in a most unpleasant position....

In this position V. Vivian remained while Carlisle slept.  However, the new day, as it pleasantly proved, brought no need for such severe measures.  Many rings at doorbell and telephone Cally’s strained ears heard between getting up and bedtime, but the hard ring of Nemesis was never among them.  All day silence brooded unbroken in the direction of the Dabney House.  And when another morning wore to evening, and no heart brake, and yet another and another, there descended again upon the girl the peaceful sense of re-won security....

In these days the House of Heth was in a continual bustle.  On Tuesday next—­a week to a day from the Settlement meeting—­the ladies were to depart for New York, Hugo, and Europe, the Trousseau and the Announcement, to return no more till mid-September.  On the same day the titular master of the house was to go off for a five days’ fishing junket, thence flying to New York for the “seeing off,” and soon thereafter starting out for a three weeks’ business trip to the Far West.  Along with the various domestic problems raised by this programme, there were all the routine duties of the season to be attended to.  Cold-weather things must still be salted down with camphor balls and packed away; costly pictures provided with muslin wrappers; drawing-room furniture with linen slip-covers; rooms cleaned and locked up, doors and windows screened and awninged.  Mrs. Heth went dashing from one bit of generalship to another, and telephoned ten thousand times a day.  Nevertheless she kept eyes in her head, and accordingly she observed to Mr. Heth one starlit night, as they sat a deux on the little front balcony where flowering window-boxes so refinedly concealed one from the public view: