Now her mother looked somewhat disappointed, but said, snapping a glove button: "It would be like him to do it, and say not a word to anybody. Why, there's a foolish story Mrs. Wayne told me this morning that the whole thing had fallen through, when Mrs. Berkeley Page came forward anonymously with a gift of twenty-five thousand--simply buying the building outright, in fact. I don't, of course, believe a word of it. She's exactly the kind to let her right hand know what her left was doing. Still, I did think perhaps Hugo might possibly have done something of the sort. He was so interested--he spoke of the Settlement to me only yesterday...." The girl gazed at her mother, and a sudden light broke into her eyes. Across her memory there flashed Canning's cryptic remark, only the other night: "We'll show him something about giving away money some day."... This, then, was what he had meant: perhaps he had already done it that night. She knew that Hugo had curiously disliked Dr. Vivian at sight, and that, by the bond between her and him, he had somehow entered into her own feminine feeling that to give handsomely to the fellow's own charity (to which he himself gave nothing at all) was to show him up completely in the interest of public morals. The gift of such a sum as twenty-five thousand dollars simply exploded him off the horizon.... Her heart glowing toward her understanding lover, she clapped her small hands and cried: "He did!--I remember something he said about it now. Oh, I _know_ he did!" "I felt morally certain of it," said mamma, calmly, peering through the plate glass of the door. "Don't tell me Mary Page would do a thing like that. Ah, here is the car at last...." Carlisle said with sudden eagerness: "Do wait a minute for me, mamma! I believe I'll go to the meeting, too." Naturally some discussion followed this whimsical request. The upshot was that Mrs. Heth, being late already, promised to send the car back. Cally, gloom banished, ran up the stairs, her mother's voice following behind like a trade-wind. "It's to be in the office of that Dr. Vivian--you know?... one flight up. No difficulty in finding ... Sure to put on rubbers...." The last words to be distinctly heard were: "Look for me right up at the front." In her own room Carlisle flew about quite blithely, making ready for the unexpected excursion with odd anticipations beyond mamma's guessing. She felt grateful to Hugo, attached to him by a new tie; for he, however clearly he had understood it himself, had beautifully put her in just that position toward the religious fellow which she had so long desired to occupy: the position, in short, of overwhelming moral superiority. How easy now, choosing her own moment, to say what would dispel forever the man's odd little power of causing her to worry....