"Goodness, Cally! You talk as if you lived in a special kind of purgatory," said Hen. "I don't know anybody that has a better time than you." "Is an everlasting round of gaieties, all exactly alike, your idea of a perfect time? What is the point or meaning of it all?" demanded Cally, the philosopher. "The whole trouble with me," she added, explanatorily, "is that I haven't budged from home in three months, and I'm simply bored deaf and dumb." Hen might have replied that she hadn't budged for three years, but what was the use? She said instead: "When're you going to sail for Europe. May?" "It remains to be seen whether we sail at all or not," answered Carlisle, with a sudden mocking little laugh. "Mamma talks several times a day of cancelling our passage and shipping me off to Aunt Helen's farm for the summer. She's been tremendously droll with me of late...." Droll, of course, was only the girl's derisive euphemism. The truth was that mamma's attitude, since hearing of the extraordinary rupture,--which her daughter refused either to explain or amend instantly,--had been nothing short of violent. Jangling scenes recurred daily.... Perhaps, indeed, it was mamma's relentless pressure that had brought about the gradual shifting, amounting to a total revolution, in Cally's own attitude. More probably, though, it was only the inevitable resurgence of her own sane fundamental purposes, temporarily swept away by purblind passion. It is one thing to kick out your symbol of happiness in a burst of senseless rage. It is quite another to learn to live day by day without it.... Why, indeed, should she not yield obedience to poor mamma--at the least greet Canning's return with some mark of forgiveness, a tiny olive-branch?... Henrietta Cooney's voice spoke, singularly apropos: "You don't seem to be the only one who's been bored lately, Cally--that ought to comfort you! Chas and I saw Mr. Canning yesterday, and he looked bluer than indigo. Mad, too!" Surprise betrayed Carlisle into a naked display of interest. Turning with a little jump, she stared at Hen with a kind of breathless rigidity. "You saw _Mr. Canning yesterday!_... Where?" "Why, out on the old Plattsburg Turnpike," said Hen, certain now that the affair was not on again--"near the Three Winds Road. We happened to be taking a walk out there, and he dashed by on that beautiful big bay mare of Mr. Payne's, going like a runaway. He didn't look happy a bit ... You knew he was here, I suppose?" By a very special effort, Carlisle had recaptured her poise: it was not her habit to confide her troubles to anybody, least of all to a Cooney. "Oh, no!" she answered in a voice of careless frankness. "I don't know the first thing about his movements any more." "Well, it seems he only came for over Sunday. A friend of Mr. Payne's told Chas he was here, on Saturday. He went off again on the noon train to-day." "Oh!... Did he?"