described as a slink.




III

How Carlisle screamed, when the Boat upset, or else didn't,
as the Case might be; also of Mrs. Heth, who went down Six
Floors to nail Falsehoods, etc.


Miss Carlisle Heth sat cold and proud in the approaching lifeboat,
picking at her sopping skirts. She ignored, hardly hearing, the
conversation of her rescuer, hinting broadly that she should reveal
these mysteries to him. Revelation, as she understood herself, was the
contrary of her desire. The occurrences of the last quarter of an hour
had actually dazed her; but the net result of them was sufficiently
manifest. Her purpose had been to detach herself unnoticed from
Dalhousie's gay fame. And now:--_Look at the boat pavilion_....

It was the bitterest moment of Miss Heth's well-sheltered young life. Of
notoriety, of a vulgar sensation such as this, of malicious gossip, of
all that was cheap and familiarizing, she had a deep-seated horror. Of
the moment of reckoning with her mother, whose objections to noisy rumor
rather surpassed her own, she felt a wholesome dread. There was also the
matter of her personal appearance, which she conceived to be repulsive:
she was confident that she looked a hideosity and a sight. Her eyes
fastened from afar upon the staring faces on the pavilion. She saw
hungry curiosity stalking there, naked and unashamed, and the sight