“Was it YOU?” said Carlisle, breaking through his defenses ...  “Do you mean—­it was YOU, all along?...”

“I mean nothing of any sort.  Does it occur to you that these questions are quite unfair?—­that they put me in a ...”

She demanded in a small voice:  “Did you buy this house for the Settlement?”

Shot down with the pointblank question, the tall young man, whose coat was so extremely polished at the elbows, died game, saying with sudden gentleness: 

“No, it was my Uncle Armistead.”

And then there was no sound but the steady beat of the rain upon sidewalk and roofs ...

Upstairs, just a floor and a ceiling away, Mrs. Heth, craning her neck for the last time, perceived that Cally had decided not to come to the meeting; also that it was just as well, viewing the inclement weather.  Downstairs, almost directly beneath her, Cally stood front to front with the family enemy, her face quite white.

“Of course you understand,” the enemy was saying, hurriedly and yet firmly too, “he gave me the money expecting it to be used for the public good.  I’ve considered that I merely had it in trust, as a fund for—­for these purposes, as I’ve explained.  And this—­well, you may easily imagine that it was the most perfect form of self-indulgence....  I’ve gotten so fond of this old place ...  But I can’t imagine how we came to be talking of it, and I beg that you’ll forget the whole matter.  I—­my uncle would have been very much annoyed to—­to have it known or talked about....”

Not in that singular experience in the Cooney parlor, not even in the memorable New Year’s moment in her own library, had Carlisle been swept with such a desire to dissociate herself from her own person, to sneak away from herself, to drop through the floor.  Nevertheless, some dignity in her, standing fast, struck out for salvage; and out of the uprush of humiliating sensation, she heard her voice, colorless and flat: 

“I’m sorry I said that.  You make me ... quite ashamed....”

The flush deepened abruptly on the tall doctor’s cheek.

“Don’t say that!  Don’t you suppose I understand how absolutely natural it was?...  Everybody’d have thought just the same, in your place....”

Carlisle had turned away from his translucent eye, finding it unbearable; she descended from the stair, took an irresolute step or two over the ruined floor of the once stately court.  And then she halted, having really nowhere to go, staring fixedly toward the distant doors....

Mamma’s nearness could not help her now.  Hugo’s fortifying love was no buffer against this extraordinary moment.  All alone Cally stood with the contemned religious fellow who had unhorsed and disarmed her once again, and now there would be no more weapons.  And there was a worse thing here than her mean looking for hypocrisy, and the discovery, instead, of a mad generosity, a princely folly.  Bad enough all that seemed; very bad indeed:  but Cally’s painful moment seemed to cut deeper yet.