“It seems,” he said, “that you and I are irrevocably related in all kinds of delightful ways, Mrs. Paige.  Your sister-in-law very charmingly admits it, graciously overlooks and pardons my many delinquencies, and has asked me to come again.  Will you ask me, too?”

Ailsa merely looked at him.

Mrs. Craig said, laughing:  “I knew you were all Ormond and entirely Irish as soon as I came in the do’—­befo’ I became aware of your racial fluency.  I speak fo’ my husband and myse’f when I say, please remember that our do’ is ve’y wide open to our own kin—­and that you are of them——­”

“Oh, I’m all sorts of things beside—­” He paused for a second—­“Cousin Celia,” he added so lightly that the grace with which he said it covered the impudence, and she laughed in semi-critical approval and turned to Ailsa, whose smile in response was chilly—­chillier still when Berkley did what few men have done convincingly since powdered hair and knee-breeches became unfashionable—­bent to salute Celia Craig’s fingertips.  Then he turned to her and took his leave of her in a conventional manner entirely worthy of the name his mother bore,—­and her mother before her, and many a handsome man and many a beautiful woman back to times when a great duke stood unjustly attainted, and the Ormonds served their king with steel sword and golden ewer; and served him faithfully and well.

Camilla Lent called a little later.  Ailsa was in the backyard garden, a trowel in her hand, industriously loosening the earth around the prairie roses.

“Camilla,” she said, looking up from where she was kneeling among the shrubs, “what was it you said this morning about Mr. Berkley being some unpleasant kind of man?”

“How funny,” laughed Camilla.  “You asked me that twice before.”

“Did I?  I forgot,” said Mrs. Paige with a shrug; and, bending over again, became exceedingly busy with her trowel until the fire in her cheeks had cooled.

“Every woman that ever saw him becomes infatuated with Phil Berkley,” said Camilla cheerfully.  “I was.  You will be.  And the worst of it is he’s simply not worth it.”

“I—­thought not.”

“Why did you think not?”

“I don’t know why.”

“He can be fascinating,” said Camilla reflectively, “but he doesn’t always trouble himself to be.”

“Doesn’t he?” said Ailsa with a strange sense of relief.

Camilla hesitated, lowered her voice.

“They say he is fast,” she whispered.  Ailsa, on her knees, turned and looked up.

“Whatever that means,” added Camilla, shuddering.  “But all the same, every girl who sees him begins to adore him immediately until her parents make her stop.”

“How silly,” said Ailsa in a leisurely level voice.  But her heart was beating furiously, and she turned to her roses with a blind energy that threatened them root and runner.

“How did you happen to think of him at all?” continued Camilla mischievously.