"J. Forsythe is in New York. Robert's in the sulks. James Bogue, 2d, is in bed--measles, if you please ... Do you ever have the horrible nobody-loves-you feeling? Rather odious, isn't it?"
"Ghastly," said Hen.
"I'll be awfully glad to get away next month," continued Cally....
Interested by the hiatus in Cally's list of missing swains, Hen desired that this conversation should go on. Like most people, the Cooneys had of course heard of, and gossiped about, the open breach between their cousin and Mr. Canning a month ago, promptly followed by the great young man's departure from town. Through the masculine half of the local world, it was generally assumed that Miss Heth had actually rejected Mr. Canning. It was a rare tribute to the girl's attractions that not a few women also believed this, even though Cally's best girl-friends, like Mattie Allen, were perfectly sure nothing of the sort had happened....
Hen, a Cooney, had had a special reason for wondering if this interesting affair might not be "on" again. However, Cally, skipping the conversation along, was talking now of the visit she had in prospect to her friend, Mrs. Willing, Florence Stone that was, in New York. Florrie, she informed Hen, wanted her particularly for the Lenten weeks, promising that they would spend the sober penitential season in a hilarious round of theatres, restaurants, and shops. It appeared that this promising invitation had come only that morning, and Cally described it as a direct answer to prayer.
"Goodness, Cally! You talk as if you lived in a special kind of purgatory," said Hen. "I don't know anybody that has a better time than you."
"Is an everlasting round of gaieties, all exactly alike, your idea of a perfect time? What is the point or meaning of it all?" demanded Cally, the philosopher. "The whole trouble with me," she added, explanatorily, "is that I haven't budged from home in three months, and I'm simply bored deaf and dumb."
Hen might have replied that she hadn't budged for three years, but what was the use? She said instead: "When're you going to sail for Europe. May?"
"It remains to be seen whether we sail at all or not," answered Carlisle, with a sudden mocking little laugh. "Mamma talks several times a day of cancelling our passage and shipping me off to Aunt Helen's farm for the summer. She's been tremendously droll with me of late...."
Droll, of course, was only the girl's derisive euphemism. The truth was that mamma's attitude, since hearing of the extraordinary rupture,--which her daughter refused either to explain or amend instantly,--had been nothing short of violent. Jangling scenes recurred daily.... Perhaps, indeed, it was mamma's relentless pressure that had brought about the gradual shifting, amounting to a total revolution, in Cally's own attitude. More probably, though, it was only the inevitable resurgence of her own sane fundamental purposes, temporarily swept away by purblind passion.