Her excellent Philip, with every appearance of being seriously annoyed, replied unsmilingly:
"Circumstances have been very much against our meeting, my dear Clo."
His eyes were fixed upon the ground, but it would not have been possible to escape hearing the contemptuous snap of Aunt Clo's thumb and middle finger.
"You still refuse to call a spade a spade," she said with mingled scorn and compassion. "I recognized your old weakness when I received our little one at Genazzano."
"Lily is a good, happy little child, I hope," said Philip quite automatically, making use of the formula that he had always opposed to any criticism of his parental methods.
Aunt Clo shrugged her shoulders.
"She is singularly ill-equipped to encounter life. You ask me why I come to such a conclusion, what I find in our Lily? I find in her an invincible ignorance of the true facts of life, the tendency of an ostrich to hide her head from the light, an entire absence of that frank, free outlook that is the birthright of every thinking soul. I find her wrapped in the conventionalities and sentimentalities of a bygone age."
Philip remained perfectly silent, but Miss Stellenthorpe was not thereby debarred from carrying on a spirited conversation.
"Did I then, you enquire, break down the foolish wall of prejudice and ignorance, and show our Lily something of the blue mountains beyond? I reply that I did. My own bigger, wider, clearer vision was what I strove to teach her."
"You gave Lily a most delightful visit to Italy," said Philip in measured tones. "She is very much beholden to you, and so am I. Nicholas Aubray, of course, is an old friend of yours."