“Mrs. Craig,” said Ailsa.

“I don’t believe it,” he said.  “You haven’t grown-up children!”

“Don’t you really believe it, Mr. Berkley?  Or is it just the flattering Irish in you that natters us poor women to our destruction?”

He had sense and wit enough to pay her a quick and really graceful compliment; to which she responded, still laughing: 

“Oh, it is the Ormond in you!  I am truly ve’y glad you came.  You are Constance Berkley’s son—­Connie Berkley!  The sweetest girl that ever lived.”

There was a silence.  Then Mrs. Craig said gently: 

“I was her maid of honour, Mr. Berkley.”

Ailsa raised her eyes to his altered face, startled at the change in it.  He looked at her absently, then his gaze reverted to Ailsa Paige.

“I loved her dearly,” said Mrs. Craig, dropping a light, impulsive hand on his.  “I want her son to know it.”

Her eyes were soft and compassionate; her hand still lingered lightly on his, and she let it rest so.

“Mrs. Craig,” he said, “you are the most real person I have known in many years among the phantoms.  I thought your sister-in-law was.  But you are still more real.”

“Am I?” she laid her other hand over his, considering him earnestly.  Ailsa looking on, astonished, noticed a singular radiance on his face—­the pale transfiguration from some quick inward illumination.

Then Celia Craig’s voice sounded almost caressingly: 

“I think you should have come to see us long ago.”  A pause.  “You are as welcome in this house as your mother would be if she were living.  I love and honour her memory.”

“I have honoured little else in the world,” he said.  They looked at one another for a moment; then her quick smile broke out.  “I have an album.  There are some Paiges, Ormonds, and Berkleys in it——­”

Ailsa came forward slowly.

“Shall I look for it, Celia?”

“No, Honey-bell.”  She turned lightly and went into the back parlour, smiling mysteriously to herself, her vast, pale-blue crinoline rustling against the furniture.

“My sister-in-law,” said Ailsa, after an interval of silent constraint, “is very Southern.  Any sort of kinship means a great deal to her.  I, of course, am Northern, and regard such matters as unimportant.”

“It is very gracious of Mrs. Craig to remember it,” he said.  “I know nothing finer than confidence in one’s own kin.”

She flushed angrily.  “I have not that confidence—­in kinsman.”

For a moment their eyes met.  Hers were hard as purple steel.

“Is that final?”

“Yes.”

The muscles in his cheeks grew tense, then into his eyes came that reckless glimmer which in the beginning she had distrusted—­a gay, irresponsible radiance which seemed to mock at all things worthy.

He said:  “No, it is not final.  I shall come back to you.”