Dalhousie had long since become but a shadow and a name to Cally; she had willed it so, and so it had been. Now, in his own poor scrawl, the ghost of a lover too roughly discarded rose and walked again. And beneath the cheap writing and the unrestrained self-pity, she seemed to plumb for the first time the depths of the boy's present misery. The old story, having struck him down once, had hunted him out and struck him down again. Where now would he hide?... The too reminiscent letter had come with the inopportunity of destiny. A little more pressure and she was done for. But this was mere mad folly. To shake it off at once, Cally began to walk about her bedchamber. Nothing had really happened that had not been true all along. She wished more than ever that it had all been started differently, but it was too late to consider that now. She must think of herself, and of Hugo and mamma. Dalhousie's friend had done his worst, and she could still withstand it. Once in New York, once in Europe, and all would be as it had been before.... Nevertheless, she was presently weak enough to open the letter again. Now her eye fell upon two lines written in the margin at the top of the first page, which she had missed before. They were in the writing of the envelope, and read: You can reach me at any time, day or night, through Meeghan's Grocery--Jefferson 4127. The words sprang up at her, and she stared back at them fascinated. The man at the Dabney House was certain that she would tell now. He thought the resolution might come on her suddenly, as in the night. Nominally, he left it to her; yet at the same time he contrived to make her feel caught in a trap, with no alternative, with this sense of enormous pressure upon her. She remembered the man's strange, stern words to her: "You can't be happy now, till you let the truth be known." All at once it seemed almost as if there were some one in the room with her. She looked around hastily: but of course there was no one. She became very much frightened.... There came a knock on the door, and a voice: "Genaman in the parlor to see you, Miss Cyahlile. Mist' Avery." "I can't come down." "Ma'am?" "Say I'm not well and am lying down." In the hall below, the parlormaid Annie encountered Mrs. Heth, waked from her nap by the two rings at the bell. Mrs. Heth ascended to Carlisle's room and rattled the knob. "Cally?... Why, your door's locked!" The door opened, and Carlisle confronted her mother with a white tremulous face. "What's the matter?" said Mrs. Heth, gliding in with an expression of maternal solicitude. "Annie said you weren't well and were lying down." "I'm not well ... Mamma, let's go to New York to-morrow." "Go _to-morrow!_... Why, _what's_ the matter?" "Nothing. Only I--I'm so tired of being at home." Then her strained stiffness broke abruptly, and she flung her arms around her mother's neck with an hysterical abandon by no means characteristic.