“Yes, so Mr. Macdonald told me—Mr. Kingslake, I mean. I knew his work first through his nom de guerre, and I can scarcely think of him yet as Mr. Kingslake. We shall meet again, then,” she went on. “I’m going to Sheepcote too.”
“What’s that?” asked Lady Wilmot, who, as Mayne rightly surmised, had been keeping one amused ear upon the conversation, while she failed to listen to Mr. Nevern with the other. “What’s that? You going down to Sheepcote, Philippa? What for?”
“So strange!” returned Philippa, absolutely undisconcerted by the brusque impertinence of the question, and she recounted the information she had written to Cecily. “And do you know, dear Lady Wilmot, that I went to school with Mrs. Kingslake—Cecily Merivale? Wasn’t it a charming discovery to make? I’m longing to meet her again. Dear Cecily! I haven’t seen her since she was about seventeen. She was so pretty.”
“Well, if it’s her looks you care about, you’ll be disappointed. She’s lost them. I’ve no patience with a woman who loses her looks. It’s so careless.”
“But, dear Lady Wilmot,” began Philippa, with a tender smile, “after all, do looks matter?”
“Don’t be a humbug, my dear. You know they do,” returned her hostess with finality.
Mayne rose. “Don’t go, I haven’t spoken to you,” Lady Wilmot commanded. “Now, Mr. Nevern, you can talk to Philippa. So you are going to stay with the Kingslakes?”
“Kingslake asked me to go down—yes.”
“I thought you and he were not the best of friends?”
Mayne shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “I have no recollection of any quarrel.”