“He called on—­Mrs. Craig this afternoon.”

“I didn’t know she knew him.”

“They are related—­distantly—­I believe——­”

“Oh,” exclaimed Camilla.  “I’m terribly sorry I spoke that way about him, dear——­”

“I don’t care what you say about him,” returned Ailsa Paige fiercely, emptying some grains of sand out of one of her gloves; resolutely emptying her mind, too, of Philip Berkley.

“Dear,” she added gaily to Camilla, “come in and we’ll have tea and gossip, English fashion.  And I’ll tell you about my new duties at the Home for Destitute Children—­every morning from ten to twelve, my dear, in their horrid old infirmary—­the poor little darlings!—­and I would be there all day if I wasn’t a selfish, indolent, pleasure-loving creature without an ounce of womanly feeling—­Yes I am!  I must be, to go about to galleries and dances and Philharmonics when there are motherless children in that infirmary, as sick for lack of love as for the hundred and one ailments distressing their tender little bodies.”

But over their tea and marmalade and toast she became less communicative; and once or twice the conversation betrayed an unexpected tendency to drift toward Berkley.

“I haven’t the slightest curiosity concerning him, dear,” said Ailsa, attempting corroboration in a yawn—­which indiscretion she was unable to accomplish.

“Well,” remarked Camilla, “the chances are that you’ve seen the last of him if you showed it too plainly.  Men don’t come back when a girl doesn’t wish them to.  Do they?”

After Camilla had gone, Ailsa roamed about the parlours, apparently renewing her acquaintance with the familiar decorations.  Sometimes she stood at windows, looking thoughtfully into the empty street; sometimes she sat in corners, critically surveying empty space.

Yes, the chances were that he would scarcely care to come back.  A man of that kind did not belong in her sister-in-law’s house, anyway, nor in her own—­a man who could appeal to a woman for a favourable opinion of himself, asking her to suspend her reason, stifle logic, stultify her own intelligence, and trust to a sentimental impulse that he deserved the toleration and consideration which he asked for. . . .  It was certainly well for her that he should not return. . . .  It would be better for her to lay the entire matter before her sister-in-law—­that was what she would do immediately!

She sprang to her feet and ran lightly up-stairs; but, fast as she fled, thought outran her slender flying feet, and she came at last very leisurely into Celia’s room, a subdued, demure opportunist, apparently with nothing on her mind and conscience,

“If I may have the carriage at ten, Celia, I’ll begin on the Destitute Children to-morrow. . . .  Poor babies! . . .  If they only had once a week as wholesome food as is wasted in this city every day by Irish servants . . . which reminds me—­I suppose you will have to invite your new kinsman to dine with you.”