"Take it, please," said she, "to the lady at the table where you found me. And say I shall not come back to dinner." Then Carlisle found herself in the cloak-room, which happened to be empty except for the smiling maid. She had hardly entered and repelled the woman's overtures, when she heard the hurried step of her mother, brought quickly by the buttons' strange words. "Cally! Are you ill? What on earth's happened?" Cally sat stiffly in a chair against the wall, her face colorless. Different, this, from the telling she had contemplated, not five minutes ago. What had happened, indeed? She said in a small flat voice: "I heard some bad news--over the telephone. A man--has died. He killed himself, this afternoon--" Commanding even in that moment, Mrs. Heth turned upon the hovering maid and said: "A glass of water." When the woman had passed out of earshot, she turned again, and put her two strong hands on Cally's shoulders. "What man? Who was this you called up long-distance?" "Mr. Dalhousie," said Cally's small voice. "I called up a friend of his...." She looked up fixedly at her mother and said: "Mamma, he did it because of me." The name of ill omen staggered the mother a little. Her voice was half harsh, half frightened: "Because of you! You are ill, my poor child. The shock has upset you. You are out of your head. The boy's mind was unhinged by drink. Every one said so. He had broken his father's heart with--" "But he did this because of me. Because of what I let everybody think of him.... Mamma, I--I must go back home. I'm sorry to upset everything so...." The maid stood by with her tray and glass, but no hand reached for the offering. "Back to the hotel? Of course!--you are ill, my poor dear! You need rest...." "I mean back home. You see I can't be here now ... when this has happened. I must go now, to-night. I remember the train goes at nine-fifty-five." Mrs. Heth, wheeling upon the maid with livid perturbation, cried: "Get my wraps." XX In which Jack Dalhousie wears a New Dignity, and the Lame Stranger comes to the House of Heth. Dalhousie had been worthless while he lived. Now he had achieved the last supreme importance. The inconsiderable of yesterday wore a mute and mighty power. So he reached over the spaces, and broke the brilliant dinner-party at the Café des Ambassadeurs. So Mrs. Heth and Carlisle Heth disputed, by this new great dignity that was his, and talked in the hotel bedroom, and hurriedly changed evening attire for travelling suits. And so Hugo Canning, abruptly widowed at a railway station, was left to toss wakefully that night, ridden by deepening anxieties.... For Cally had carried her extraordinary point; now that Jack Dalhousie was henceforward indifferent to all these matters.