"Well?"
Cally laughed, and held up her betrothal finger, which was unadorned.
"I'm not," said she.
Mamma's face fell.
"Don't look so blank!" said the daughter, with a little laugh and shrug. "It's all going to happen next week, by the book.... Don't you know I'm perfectly safe?"
Mr. Heth heard Cally's business news with open indignation. She made her report to him that night, just after dinner; and she saw her father's business manner emerge sharply from beneath his genial domesticity.
The "new law" was an old story to the owner of the Cheroot Works. He kept apprised of the signs of the times; and he happened to know in some detail the provisions of the pernicious legislation the Labor Commissioner was cooking up in secret,--"that'd confiscate two years' profits from every near mill in town," said MacQueen. But the rest was news, and highly unwelcome news. To fight blackmail legislation against progressive business was comparatively simple; but a string of lies in the newspapers made a more insidious assault, injuring a man's credit, his standing as a conservative financier, his ability to inspire "confidence": valuable possessions to the President of the Fourth National Bank, and already indefinably impaired by the sensational family matter last spring....
"Vivian!--That fellow!" he exclaimed, recalling not only the Severe Arraignment, but the cataclysm in the House....
"Why, Cally! I thought you considered him sort of a friend of yours!"