She heard a voice: the lame stranger speaking as if to himself.
"All that beauty without, and nothing at all within.... So lovely to the eye, and empty where the heart should be.... God pity you, poor little thing...."
And then Carlisle passed him quickly and went out of the summer-house upon the lawn. The escape, this time, presented no difficulties. For the last syllable had hardly died on the young man's lip before self-consciousness appeared to return upon him, staggering him, it may be, at the words of his mouth. He turned, abruptly, and fled in the other direction.
So the audience in the moonlit summer-house concluded precipitately, with the simultaneous departure of both parties from opposite exits. Carlisle Heth went hurrying across the lawn. Within her, there was a tumult; but her will was not feeble, and her sense of decorum and the eternally fitting hardly less tenacious. Strongly she ruled her spirit for the revivifying remeeting that awaited her just ahead....
But it was not Mr. Canning's voice which greeted her as she stepped up on the hotel piazza. It was the low, angry challenge of her soldier-mother, nipped in the act of charging upon the summer-house.
"Carlisle!... In heaven's name, what have you been doing?"
Facing mamma on the deserted piazza-end, Carlisle explained in a hurried sentence that Mr. Dalhousie had sent a pleading friend to her, whom she had felt obliged to see....
"Are you mad to say such a thing? Was it for wild antics of this sort that I threw everything to the winds to bring you down here?"
"Oh, mamma--please!" said Carlisle, her breath coming fast. "I've had about enough.... I--I couldn't run the risk of his starting heaven knows what scandalous story. Where is Mr. Canning?"
Mamma looked as if she wanted to shake her.