“No. . . .  I hope she is quite well.”

“You are not very enthusiastic.”

“I have every reason to be.  She is a very winsome girl.”

“She’s a dear. . . .  She has spoken of you several times.”

“That is most amiable of her, and of you to say so.”

“Oh, very,” laughed Camilla, tossing her pretty head, “but it evidently does not interest you very much.  In fact—­” she glanced sidewise—­“it is understood that no woman ever interests you for more than forty-eight consecutive hours.”

“Pure slander, Camilla. You do.”

“Oh—­not in the way I mean.”

“Well, but you don’t expect me to be interested in Mrs. Paige—­in the way you mean do you?”

“Why not?” she asked mischievously.

“Because, to begin properly, Mrs. Paige is not likely ever to become interested in me.”

“I am heartily glad of it,” retorted Camilla.  “You’d forget her in a week,”

“That’s more than forty-eight hours,” he said, laughing.  “You’re flattering me now.”

“Anyway,” said Camilla, “I don’t see why everybody that knows her isn’t mad about Ailsa Paige.  She has such high principles, such ideals, such wonderful aspirations—­” She clasped her hands sentimentally:  “At times, Phil, she seems too ethereal, scarcely of earth—­and yet I breakfasted with her and she ate twice as much as I did. How does she keep that glorious figure!”

Plumpness was the bane and terror of Camilla’s life.  Her smooth, suave white skin was glossy and tight; distracting curves, entrancing contours characterised her now; but her full red lips fairly trembled as she gazed at her parents’ portraits in her bedroom, for they had both been of a florid texture and full habit; and she had now long refused sugar and the comforts of sweetmeats dear to the palate of her age and sex.  And mostly was this self-denial practised for the sake of a young and unobservant friend, one Stephen Craig, who had so far evinced no unusual inclination for her, or for anything except cigars and masculine society of his own age and condition.

She managed to get Philip Berkley to talk about Stephen, which ingenuity soothed her.  But Philip was becoming bored, and he presently escaped to retrace his steps up Broadway, up Fifth Avenue, and then west to the exceedingly modest lodgings whither fate and misfortune had wafted him.

On the way he passed Colonel Arran’s big double house with a sullen and sidelong scowl, and continued onward with a shrug.  But he smiled no more to himself.

Burgess was in the room, cross-legged on the floor, ironing out his master’s best coat.

“What the devil are you about,” said Philip ungraciously.  “Get up.  I need what floor I’ve got to stand on.”

Burgess obediently laid the board and the coat on a trunk and continued ironing; and Philip scowled at him askance.