However, if there was no withdrawing, neither was there the slightest break in the smooth outer continuity of things. Dear Mattie (already with a sheep's eye for the king among men in the doorway) had seized the conversation even before Carlisle left it hanging.
"Hello, darling Cally! Do come in and share our lovely little snuggery. Isn't it cunning?--don't you think we were awfully smart to find it? Oh, do you know Dr. Vivian?--Miss Heth."
"How do you do?" said Cally, without a second glance.... "This is she, Mr. Canning--Miss Mattie Allen, whom you've heard so much about...."
Canning, hardly less piqued than Carlisle by the presence of strangers in his lodge, and unable to remember having heard the name Allen before in his life, of course rose gallantly.
"I hope Miss Allen won't think me impertinent," he said, most delightfully, "if I claim her as an old friend...."
Miss Allen's response acquitted him of all impertinence. It was she who then recalled an omission, and in her sweet artless way bade the two gentlemen be acquainted. Dr. Vivian (who could not exactly recollect the steps by which he had come to be duetting in his uncle's den with Miss Allen) looked as if he expected to shake hands with Miss Heth's handsome squire; but Canning, having shot him with a quick curious glance, merely bowed, in silence. Through the minds of both men (and also of Miss Carlisle Heth) had swept at the same moment a darting memory of their last meeting....
And then it was suddenly seen by all that Mr. Canning had been gathered in by his adroit old friend Miss Allen, and smartly withdrawn from the general society. And Cally was left to face alone the last man upon earth she wanted to see.
She, whose own plans had been so utterly different, had been on her guard against such a contingency as this; but Mattie's born gift for strategics had simply been too much for her. Mr. Canning had been surrounded and backed against a bookcase, as it were, before anybody realized what was happening to him....
"But oh, you're so dreadfully tall," she heard the voice of her gifted girl-friend, as from a distance. "I don't believe you can look far enough down to see poor little Me...."
All had happened at speed: the lines of division were still just forming. And Carlisle, of course, had no idea of tamely accepting such an unfair distribution of things. As to this man, Dr. Vivian, her attitude toward him now, after the Cooneys', was simply one of cool polished politeness. She had told him what she thought of him about the Works, and he had humbly apologized for the wrong he had done her at the Beach: that disposed of him forever, and altogether to her advantage. Cool polished politeness; but she did not intend to talk with him any more, of course, admitting him as a social acquaintance; and she was, in fact, just moving after Mattie and Mr. Canning, really opening her mouth to join in their pleasant chat, when--