"I'd enjoy immensely having him try it," said she slowly. "Immensely! I--I've wanted for some time to say a few words to him...."
At that moment the broken Cooney doorbell rang feebly, and within one minute V. Vivian came walking into the little parlor.
Supping at the Cooneys was not usually so interesting as this.
When the bell rang, Looloo, springing up from the Major's side in the dining-room, hurriedly pulled shut the folding-doors between. She apologized to her cousin through the diminishing crack, saying that it was probably awful Bob Dunn, and Cally could come hide in there with them if she'd rather. But Cally said briefly that she was not afraid, and had to go home in a little while anyway.
In the same moment Carlisle heard the voice of the caller in the hall, for whom Hen had just opened the door. She recognized this voice at the first word. And she involuntarily rose in the Cooney parlor, feeling the oddest, suddenest, most unreasoning impulse to go at once into the dining-room, after all, and be with Looloo, and watch them play checkers for a little while....
It was the surprise of it; nothing more. And Carlisle overcame that impulse. She remained standing motionless, reconsidering as by lightning flashes the quite complicated point of etiquette that so suddenly confronted her. What was a lady's proper attitude toward a nobody who has called her father a shameless homicide and herself a God-pitiful poor little thing? There was no experience to guide here. But clearer and clearer it seemed to become to Cally that to hold any converse with such an one could only be, after all, essentially debasing. Icy indifference was the stingingest rebuke....
Henrietta came through the door, with the lame medical man behind her. Without looking at him, Cally gathered that the man found the sight of her properly disquieting.
"You know my cousin, Miss Heth, I believe--Doctor Vivian, Cally."
"Oh!... How do you do!" said the doctor.
Carlisle, not advancing from the sofa-side, said: