V. V.s Eyes | Page 8

the office of First Vice-President. Absorbed by
this particular piece-in-the-paper,--for so the good lady named all
journalistic efforts, from dry-goods advertisements to leading editorials
on Trouble in the Balkans,--it was past three-thirty o'clock,
post-meridian, or well after luncheon, before her eye chanced to alight
on the Dabney House's winged words.
At this hour the ladies sat at ease in their private sitting-room on the
seventh floor of the great handsome caravansary by the sea. For to-day,
as it falls out, the House of Heth, just as we have it so firmly fixed on
Washington Street, had split and transplanted itself; all that mattered of
it, the soul and genius of the House, having flitted off seventy miles to
the Beach for an over-Sunday rest.
It was the 29th of October, which should have meant grate-fires. On the
contrary, two windows in the rented sitting-room were open, and Miss
Carlisle Heth, laying down "Pickwick Papers," by Dickens, the
well-known writer, now rose and flung wide the third.
"Whew!" said she, just as an ordinary person might have done. "It's
stifling!"
Her mother, a lifelong conservative, presently replied:
"It isn't the heat, it's the humidity."
Carlisle looked out over the sunny sea, and wondered if her mother
were never going to take her nap. She was twenty-three years old, and,
Hun or no Hun, was certainly not displeasing to the fleshly eye. Also,
she much desired to pass the time with a little sail, having already
privately engaged a catboat for that express purpose. There was no
reason whatever why she shouldn't have the sail, except that her mother
was opposed on principle to anything that looked the least bit
adventurous.
"There are cinders on me yet, in spite of my bath," added Mrs. Heth,
whisking through the less interesting pieces in the "Post."... "Willie's
train arrives at four-thirty, I believe?"
Miss Heth confirmed the belief.
"I wonder, really," mused the dowager, not for the first time, "what
attraction the place can offer Mr. Canning. Men are strange in their
choice of amusement, to say the least."
"He's tired of the hermit life, and wants to let down his bars and have a
little fun."

"He could have all the fun he wants in town, Cally. He has only to
make a sign--"
"Of course!--and be snowed under with invitations which would be
odious to him, and probably roped in for something by Helen and Sue
Louise Cheriton, say. He can have fun here, without its leading to
anything."
She added, with perverse merriment: "At least he thinks he can, not
knowing that two enterprising strangers are camping right across his
little trail."
Mrs. Heth frowned slightly. She was a slim, rather small lady, and her
fair face, at first sight, suggested an agreeable delicacy. To herself she
acknowledged with pleasure that she was "spirituelle." To the observer,
after a glance at her attractive upper face, the thick jaw and neck came
as a surprise: so did the hands and feet. The feet, seen casually in a
company, were apt to be taken for the belongings of some far stouter
woman, sitting near. They were Mrs. Heth's, however; and she had also
a small round birthmark on her left temple, which a deft arrangement of
the hair almost concealed, and a small dark mustache, which was not so
fortunately placed. She was sane and sound as to judgment, and her
will had raised the House of Heth as by a steam derrick.
Miss Heth, gazing down at three or four hardy bathers, who splashed
and shouted at the hotel float, said, laughing:
"Truly, mamma, what do you suppose the Cheritons would have given
Willie for the splendid tip?"
Mrs. Heth's frown at her newspaper deepened; otherwise she made no
response. She learned with difficulty, like a Bourbon; but many years'
experience had at last convinced her that her daughter's occasional
mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were
people in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of
Carlisle's, seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the
seamy side of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality
that had been routed; at least the headstone over the grave of a good
quality that maybe was only buried alive. But of these people, if such
there were, Mrs. Heth was positively not one....
And Carlisle's next remark was: "What would you wear to-night, for
the occasion?... Oh, there's a big motor-boat going by like the wind."
For though she might sometimes jeer aloud over processes, the

daughter was known to be quite as serious at heart as her mother, over
the great matters of life. Otherwise, look you, she might not have been
at the Beach at all to-day. The fact