"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.
"He called on—Mrs. Craig this afternoon."
"I didn't know she knew him."
"They are related—distantly—I believe——"
"Oh," exclaimed Camilla. "I'm terribly sorry I spoke that way about him, dear——"
"I don't care what you say about him," returned Ailsa Paige fiercely, emptying some grains of sand out of one of her gloves; resolutely emptying her mind, too, of Philip Berkley.
"Dear," she added gaily to Camilla, "come in and we'll have tea and gossip, English fashion. And I'll tell you about my new duties at the Home for Destitute Children—every morning from ten to twelve, my dear, in their horrid old infirmary—the poor little darlings!—and I would be there all day if I wasn't a selfish, indolent, pleasure-loving creature without an ounce of womanly feeling—Yes I am! I must be, to go about to galleries and dances and Philharmonics when there are motherless children in that infirmary, as sick for lack of love as for the hundred and one ailments distressing their tender little bodies."
But over their tea and marmalade and toast she became less communicative; and once or twice the conversation betrayed an unexpected tendency to drift toward Berkley.
"I haven't the slightest curiosity concerning him, dear," said Ailsa, attempting corroboration in a yawn—which indiscretion she was unable to accomplish.